Observers Find No Pakistan Vote Fraud : Elections: The international team says it found no proof of widespread ballot rigging, as charged by ousted Prime Minister Bhutto.

An international observer team gave its tentative seal of approval Friday to Pakistan’s disputed national elections, saying it found no proof of widespread ballot rigging or fraud.

Ousted Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto has repeatedly charged that the military-backed caretaker government used “massive fraud” to crush her populist party in Wednesday’s parliamentary elections.

Scattered “abuse and manipulation” and violence did occur, the team reported, including the abduction and arrest of local party officials and the assaulting and killing of several candidates and party workers.

But the elections “were generally open, orderly and well-administered,” according to the 40-member delegation, led by the Washington-based National Democratic Institute for International Affairs.

The group’s verdict was probably Bhutto’s best and last hope of challenging the legitimacy of her political rivals in the right-wing Islamic Democratic Alliance, who appear to be headed for a two-thirds majority in the National Assembly.

The observer team said it “saw no evidence on election night” to back Bhutto’s charges that ballot boxes were switched and polling agents illegally expelled from booths, according to a three-page preliminary report.

Ken Wollack, executive director of the National Democratic Institute, said ballot tampering on a scale sufficient to cause the anti-Bhutto landslide “would be very difficult but not impossible.”

“But we do not believe it was (sufficient),” he told reporters at a briefing here.

The team’s co-leader, former Turkish Foreign Minister Vahit Halefoglu, agreed. “This is not enough to alter the balloting or the vote,” he said.

Gross disparities in local vote margins, compared to the 1988 election that put Bhutto in power, appeared suspect because no one, including the winners, had predicted the virtual rout of Bhutto’s Pakistan People’s Party.

The National Democratic Institute will further analyze election returns before preparing its final report, especially the returns from former Bhutto strongholds in Sind and Punjab provinces, where her opponents won by suspiciously lopsided margins. For now, no evidence “substantiates allegations concerning irregular vote totals,” the report said.

Aides said Bhutto was in tears after the unexpected defeat. Her campaign had drawn huge, enthusiastic crowds, and she had predicted a strong comeback victory 11 weeks after President Ghulam Ishaq Khan dismissed her 20-month-old government for alleged corruption and misrule.

Despite Bhutto’s confident election day prediction of winning 110 to 120 of the 217 seats in the Assembly, her party won only 45, losing more than half its strength.

Her opponents in the Islamic Democratic Alliance won 105 seats overall. In Punjab, which has 63% of Pakistan’s people, they won 91 of the 114 seats at stake. Bhutto’s party won only 14.

Other parties and independents quickly offered support to the winners, giving the anti-Bhutto coalition enough strength to amend the constitution and enact laws.

The observer team was made up of representatives from 17 countries. They visited about 500 polling booths in 30 constituencies on election day, Wollack said.

The United States is eager to reach an agreement with the new government on curbing Pakistan’s nuclear weapons program. Continuing work on the program caused the Bush Administration to suspend all economic and military aid to Pakistan on Oct. 1, pending the outcome of the elections.

At a news conference, interim Prime Minister Ghulam Mustafa Jatoi insisted that there is no change in Pakistan’s nuclear program compared to 1989.

U.S. officials said the freeze is under review.