Islamists on brink of power in Pakistan

Washington fears instability in key partner as Benazir Bhutto and party of clerics join coalition of opposites
An Islamist cleric with Taliban sympathies was last night poised to become Pakistan's next prime minister after the country's religious groups agreed to form a coalition government with an alliance dominated by Benazir Bhutto's Pakistan People's party.

In a move that will deeply alarm Washington, Maulana Fazlur Rehman - once described as an over-fed cleric in plush turban and sunglasses - emerged as the coalition's candidate for prime minister.

Mr Rehman, 49, heads the Muttahida Majlis-e-Amal alliance of six religious groups that did unexpectedly well in last month's general election in which no party emerged with an overall majority.

He was locked up last year after denouncing America's war in Afghanistan and wants all US bases in Pakistan to be closed down.

A faction of the Pakistan Muslim League, the PML (Q), which supports the country's military president general Pervez Musharraf won the biggest number of seats in the new assembly and had been expected to form the next government.

A spokesman for the party insisted yesterday that it would still form the next administration. But the claim increasingly lacks credibility.

Last night, western observers were coming to terms with the fact that a man who once called on his followers to wage a "holy war", against President Bush could soon become prime minister of the world's newest nuclear power.

"We are watching carefully," one western diplomat said.

Yesterday, Nasrullah Khan, the head of the 15-party Alliance for the Restoration of Democracy, which includes the PPP, announced that it had reached an agreement with the leaders of the religious groups.

"We have a majority to form a coalition government," he told reporters in Pakistan's capital Islamabad.

The arrangement is a devastating blow to general Musharraf and returns his arch-enemy Benazir Bhutto, into the heart of governance.

Gen Musharraf had barred Ms Bhutto from standing in the election.

Yesterday, Farhatullah Babar, a spokesman for Ms Bhutto, said the new government would reverse a series of controversial constitutional amendments enacted in the run-up to the polls.

They formalise the military's role in government and give General Musharraf the right to sack the new prime minister.

"Musharraf must be a very worried man tonight," Mr Babar told the Guardian last night. "He over-manipulated the elections, and as a result the military government is now in trouble."

Mr Babar insisted the new coalition "had the numbers", to form a majority in the 334-seat assembly.

The new government can also be expected to try to throw out outstanding corruption cases against Ms Bhutto - possibly paving the way for her return from self-imposed exile in London.

But there were already serious doubts as to the durability of a power-sharing arrangement between parties with virtually nothing in common.

The MMA and the liberal, secular PPP are ideological opposites. They have completely different views on foreign policy and sharia law.

"The coalition would be massively unstable. It would be a government in which the two component parts don't agree on anything apart from their opposition to Musharraf and his constitutional reforms," one western diplomat said last night.

During the election campaign, the MMA called for all American troops to leave Pakistan, and said that US bases should be closed down.

But in recent days, the MMA's leaders have struck a pragmatic note, and have said they want peaceful relations with the United States.

Ms Bhutto is in favour of American bases and last year backed general Musharraf's decision to dump the Taliban and support the US war in Afghanistan.

The MMA is unlikely to try to impose radical Islamic reforms because of opposition from Ms Bhutto, political observers believe.

The MMA did unexpectedly well in the October 10 elections - and swept to power in the North-West Frontier Province and in Baluchistan, the two strategic tribal regions bordering Afghanistan where dozens of Taliban fugitives are still believed to be holed up.

The alliance's leaders have repeatedly complained that they are not fundamentalists and say they have been wrongly caricatured by the western media.

In an interview with the Observer last month, Qazi Hussain Ahmad, the MMA's vice-president, said that Pakistan's religious parties had been "misunderstood".

"We are not extremists. We would like to make bridges with the western world."

But he added: "The only thing we want is justice."

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