Zia Again Promising Election : Pakistan Politics Linked to Blast Probe, Pregnancy

The veteran diplomat hardly smiled as he speculated that the next election in Pakistan, one of America’s main allies in Asia, may be geared to the birth date of an unborn child.

“I would say elections will be held in November,” he said. “Benazir Bhutto will be nine months pregnant then, and you can imagine what it would be like to campaign in Pakistan when you’re about to give birth.”

Since Pakistan’s authoritarian leader, President Zia ul-Haq, surprised his nation and the world last month by dissolving the country’s three-year-old elected government, political wits have cited “pregnancy politics” as a key factor in the timing of his bold move.

Benazir Bhutto, they note, has been Zia’s principal political foe in the 10 years since the military, headed by Zia, overthrew her father, Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, and later hanged him for conspiracy to murder.

Benazir Bhutto was wed last year in a much-publicized arranged marriage. Now, observers say, by moving when he did, Zia has capitalized on Bhutto’s physical condition, just weeks after her family announced that she is expecting.

But the story behind Zia’s move against an embryonic democratic government that he had created and continually endorsed goes far beyond the birthday of Bhutto’s first child. It is now clear that Zia, who is still chief of the powerful Pakistani army, moved mainly to protect the armed forces from outside scrutiny--and to ensure that the military remains supreme.

The prime minister Zia ousted, using a little-known clause of Pakistan’s constitution, was on the brink of implicating senior generals in the disastrous explosion April 10 at an ammunition depot near Islamabad, according to knowledgeable government officials and foreign diplomats. In the explosion, tens of thousands of missiles, rockets and shells rained down on residential neighborhoods, killing more than 100 people.

Whatever Zia’s motives, key U.S. congressmen and State Department analysts worry that his latest political moves have tarnished his image as a reforming dictator--even though his most severe critics concede that his dismissal of the government was, at worst, a “constitutional coup.”

Congressmen such as Rep. Stephen J. Solarz (D-N.Y.) recall that Zia, a staunch anti-Communist and pro-American in a part of the world where such leaders are few, reneged on his original promise to hold elections within 90 days of his 1977 military coup--and that those elections did not come for nearly 90 months.

If Zia attempts to repeat history, Solarz and others are preparing to fight the Reagan Administration’s request for more than $4 billion in economic and military aid to Pakistan through the rest of the decade.

The aid is a key part of U.S. relations with Pakistan, whose role as an unwavering front-line state has been critical in helping the Afghan moujahedeen guerrillas against the Soviet-backed Marxist government in Kabul and forcing the Soviet Union to begin withdrawing its troops from Afghanistan on May 15.

Would Jeopardize Aid

The State Department has made it clear to Zia that any attempt to declare martial law or a failure to hold elections “promptly” would seriously jeopardize aid to his country at a time when Pakistan’s economy is reaching an all-time low.

“But the president says he understands this very well, and he insists that he has every intention of holding free and fair elections within a matter of months,” said one diplomat here who recently met with Zia.

Zia, who is charming and shrewd, is aware of his dilemma. Since his surprise moves May 29, he has met often with ambassadors from Pakistan’s principal allies: the United States, Saudi Arabia, France, Britain and Iran. Within a week of dissolving the National Assembly and firing Prime Minister Mohammed Khan Junejo, Zia held a three-hour session with Islamabad’s senior diplomatic corps to discuss his motives and goals.

Last week, in announcing that fundamentalist Islamic law will be supreme, governing everything from marriage and nudity to finance and education, Zia was careful to stress that it will not affect Pakistan’s international treaties or debts, or the thousands of foreigners who are resident here.

‘Gimmick’ Charged

Several political leaders have charged that Zia’s announcement was a “gimmick.” And one national leader, Javed Jabbar, contended that Zia was using Islam “primarily in order to perpetuate personal rule and elite interests.”

Ghafoor Ahmed, an Islamic scholar, said the new law is filled with “loopholes and escape routes.” He said he doubts that Zia was sincere in imposing strict fundamentalism on the country.

One diplomat who attended Zia’s recent “soul-baring” briefing said the president cited “mixed motives” for his recent moves.

Expanding on a May 30 speech to the nation, Zia said the country’s “experiment with democracy” had failed and the elected government had become deeply corrupt. Zia asserted that members of the National Assembly and Junejo’s Cabinet had become principally concerned with their political survival, rather than the nation’s survival.

Criticized Indecision

Furthermore, he said, they had refused to make hard decisions on such critical issues as deteriorating law and order, government overspending, Islamization and rampant heroin production.

For months before he acted, Zia had been under increasing pressure from the United States and several European governments for letting up on the country’s ambitious narcotics interdiction program. Annual heroin production in Pakistan, the world’s largest single supplier of the illicit drug, had increased from 40 tons when the elected government took office in 1985 to more than 160 tons now, Zia said.

He stressed repeatedly during his meeting with the diplomats that he fully intends to hold free and fair elections, strictly in accord with constitutional mandates, and he indicated that he will allow political parties to enter candidates for the first time in nearly two decades.

But political analysts here say the constitution is deliberately vague on when those elections must be held.

Meaning of Clause

The clause that permitted Zia to dissolve the elected government requires that he “appoint a date not later than 90 days after the dismissal for the holding of general elections.” Zia’s advisers have indicated that they understand that to mean that such an announcement must be made within 90 days but that the election itself does not have to fall within that period.

Opposition leaders say such an interpretation is “just another gimmick” by “a man who has broken one promise after another.” Yet most of them say they are afraid to organize protests to confront Zia on the issue because that could provoke him to reimpose martial law, lifted in 1985 after eight years.

“Martial law is not possible anymore,” said Iqbal Ahmed Khan, a former Zia ally who was among the Cabinet ministers dismissed May 29. “In the last three years, we have been given so much liberty. The press is now totally free. In this atmosphere, without any provocation, how can he do it?

“I do believe there will be elections soon. And I think he will hold elections on a party basis. What I fear is a hijacking of my party.”

Zia’s Political Strategy

Khan is secretary general of the Pakistan Muslim League, the country’s oldest political party and the one that had been ruling under Junejo. Most political analysts, among them Khan and several diplomatic observers, believe that Zia moved against the government in part to push out Junejo, who Zia felt had usurped too much power and prestige from him, and then to co-opt the Muslim League as Zia’s own party.

The strategy appeared to be a shrewd one. Asked if his personal loyalties lay with Junejo or the party, Khan said: “My first loyalty is to my country. My next loyalty is to my party.”

He said most members of his party would go along with removing Junejo as party president if that is what it takes to keep the party together and return it to office.

“If this man, as humble, honest and sincere as he is, must be sacrificed, then so be it,” Khan said.

Opportunism Seen

Analysts here say that illustrates the opportunism that marks much of Pakistani politics.

If for no other reason than because the Muslim League is the best-organized party, most political analysts agree, Zia will use it to field candidates who he feels are more honest, loyal and respectful of the military.

The political opposition is so disorganized and divided that Benazir Bhutto’s Pakistan People’s Party, the nation’s largest, did not even attend a recent conference in Lahore billed as “the all-party conference.”

Says Only Army United

Asked if he thought Zia’s timing--at a moment when his foes are in disarray, Bhutto is four months pregnant and Pakistan’s role in Afghanistan is more sensitive than ever--was shrewd, former minister Khan replied:

“Zia is not as shrewd as we are fools. We politicians are against each other. It is only the army which is together in Pakistan today.”

Khan is among the few national leaders who believes he knows the real reason for the timing of Zia’s sudden announcement: to ensure that the army remains together.

Junejo had been on a state visit to South Korea and the Philippines for several days before he and the assembly were dismissed. In fact, when Junejo held a news conference on his return to Islamabad, he did not even know that he was about to lose his job.

But before Junejo began his trip, he had vowed to Khan and other ministers that he would place before the Cabinet a secret report on the April 10 ammunition dump disaster as soon as he returned. The report, senior government sources said, assigns some responsibility for the explosion to several senior generals. Among them was Zia’s head of the armed forces’ joint chiefs of staff, a man who had also been the director of Zia’s internal intelligence service .

Said Arms Stored Improperly

The report also stated for the first time that the missiles and other weaponry, reportedly financed by U.S. taxpayers and earmarked for the Afghan guerrillas under a $2-billion covert CIA program, were being improperly stored in the Ojhari military camp in a residential district between Islamabad and Rawalpindi.

Zia maintained that the hourlong series of explosions was sabotage, but official sources have since said it was triggered by a leaky phosphorus shell that fell off a truck.

“There is no question Zia was very concerned about this Ojhari camp report,” said one senior diplomat in Islamabad. “He was trying to protect the military. Zia himself was about to leave the country for three weeks--one to China and two in the U.S. He was afraid what Junejo would say about the Ojhari report in his absence, and he was afraid how the military would react.

“I don’t think there was actually a possibility of a coup against Zia himself. He has the military so well wired. But I would say it reinforced the truism that the military in Pakistan is still the ultimate authority.”

‘No One Believes Him’

U.S. officials say they hope that Zia is sincere in his promise to erase another Pakistan truism--that Zia is no longer a credible national leader.

“No one believes him any more,” said retired Gen. Tikka Khan, who served as army chief of staff under Zulfikar Ali Bhutto. “He can reverse his decisions. He can break his promises. How many times in the past has he broken his promises?”

Trying to put things in a positive light, a diplomat here noted an irony in Pakistan’s current political limbo:

“If Zia does what he says he wants to do--hold prompt, party-based elections that have long been the demand of the opposition--then this apparently undemocratic act will be a greater step toward democracy than has been taken in Pakistan in a very, very long time.”