Bhutto Lobbies L.A.’s Private Sector : Trade: Pakistan prime minister unveils package of incentives for California computer firms.

Having won a sympathetic ear at the White House this week, Pakistani Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto came to Los Angeles on Wednesday to reach out to the private sector for investment in her struggling Muslim nation.

“We realize it’s a new world and we’re not looking for dependency, we’re looking for partnership,” Bhutto said in a meeting with Los Angeles Times editors and reporters. “We’d like trade, not aid.”

Later, at a session with 30 California computer industry executives, the Harvard-educated prime minister unveiled a package of incentives for the development and manufacturing of computer software in Islamabad, Karachi and Lahore. The Pakistani government, she said, will embark on a crash program to set up software technology parks in its largest cities and will exempt software exporters from corporate income taxes for six years.

“I have traveled here to Los Angeles to have a conversation with corporate America, a conversation about a very new Pakistan--the new, revitalized and restructured Pakistan which I lead as we approach a new decade, a new century and a new millennium,” Bhutto said at a late afternoon tea with potential investors.

Bhutto, who will conclude her two-day Los Angeles visit today, said she also plans to reach out to her aunts and uncles, scheduling a private dinner with relatives of her Iranian-born mother, Nusrat Bhutto, with whom she has had a sometimes stormy relationship. “They’ll never forgive me otherwise,” Bhutto joked, noting that many relatives on both sides of her family have settled in Southern California in recent years.

At the heart of Bhutto’s official visit, her first to the United States since returning to power 17 months ago, was a demand that Washington either deliver 28 F-16 jet fighters or refund the $1.2 billion Pakistan paid for them several years ago. Shipment of the planes has been blocked since 1990 under the terms of a 1985 law that banned U.S. aid and arms sales to Pakistan unless the President certified that Islamabad does not have a nuclear weapons program.

President Clinton, after meeting with Bhutto on Tuesday, said he will ask Congress to find a way to reimburse Pakistan, indicating that the law has not worked and may in fact be counterproductive.

“We are encouraged by President Clinton’s understanding of our position,” Bhutto said during a 20-minute luncheon address to the Los Angeles World Affairs Council on Wednesday at the Regent Beverly Wilshire Hotel.

Bhutto, who in 1988 became the first woman elected to lead a Muslim country, portrayed Pakistan as a voice of moderation in the Muslim world, a Cold War ally of the United States that, if adequately nurtured, could play a key role in the quest for long-term stability.

“One billion Muslims stand at the crossroads,” she said. “One billion Muslims will have to choose between the past and the future, between education and ignorance,” said Bhutto, who was also presented Wednesday with the UCLA Medal for “bringing new hope to the people of Pakistan through humane and inspired leadership.”

Her speech was briefly interrupted twice by protesters who accused her government of human rights abuses in attempting to quell violence in Karachi. Outside, about 100 peaceful protesters also demanded her ouster, calling her a puppet of the Pakistani Army.

Bhutto, 41, launched a crackdown against violence and terrorism in Karachi on the heels of the March murders of two U.S. Consulate officials. Her efforts to eliminate drug trafficking and terrorism, including the extradition of a prime suspect in the World Trade Center bombing, were praised by Clinton after their nearly three-hour White House meeting.

Yet the near-anarchy that has festered in Karachi for some time underscores a key issue at the heart of Bhutto’s quest for corporate investment.

“Companies look for stability, look for continuity, look for safety,” Pakistani-born Safi U. Qureshey, chairman of Irvine-based AST Research Inc., said before the afternoon tea. “The situation is of concern.”

At the same time, the chief executive of the world’s sixth-largest personal computer maker said: “We have to keep things moving forward. . . . The best way we can make changes is economic engagement.”

Bhutto, who was first elected nine years after her father, Prime Minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, was executed in the wake of a military coup, emphasized that multinational corporations are helping create a positive impact on the “hearts and minds” of Pakistani citizens.

For two decades up to 1993, foreign firms invested $2 billion in Pakistan, said Bhutto, who dramatically won reelection that year after having been stripped of her premiership amid accusations of corruption. In the last 17 months, she added, Pakistan has attracted almost $20 billion in corporate commitments, more than half from the United States.