Pakistani President Ousts Bhutto, Her Government

The president of Pakistan dismissed Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto’s government early today, bowing to longtime pressure from political rivals who accuse Bhutto of rampant corruption and mismanagement.

Four provincial legislatures were also dismissed, and the president named a former stalwart of Bhutto’s party, Miraj Khalid, as interim prime minister.

Soldiers, rifles slung over their shoulders, stood guard outside Bhutto’s residence and spilled into the white marble Parliament building in Islamabad, the capital.

Army units took over key installations in Islamabad, including the state-run radio and television stations, a telecommunications company, Cabinet offices and the prime minister’s secretariat. Troops also sealed the country’s airports.

There were initial reports that Bhutto’s husband and investment minister, Asif Ali Zardari, was arrested in the Punjab province capital of Lahore, where the army also was deployed. Zardari has been at the center of the scandals.

A former ally of Bhutto’s, President Farooq Leghari called for new elections to be held Feb. 3.

“An appeal to the electorate is necessary,” the president said in a statement carried by Pakistan’s state-run news agency.

Bhutto has denied the charges against her and recently warned of “a conspiracy against democracy in Pakistan.” She had vowed to complete her term, which is due to end in 1998.

The president’s order, carried by the official news agency APP, listed the following as among the reasons for his action:

* The government has taken “no meaningful steps” to stop extrajudicial killings that have cost the lives of thousands of people in Karachi and other parts of Pakistan in the last three years.

* Bhutto insinuated that the presidency and other state agencies were involved in a conspiracy to kill her brother Murtaza Bhutto, who was fatally shot in Karachi on Sept. 20.

* Bhutto “ridiculed” a Supreme Court judgment of March 20 relating to the appointment of judges and delayed its implementation, seeking to undermine the independence of the judiciary.

* Bhutto’s Cabinet attempted to “destroy the independence of the judiciary” by introducing a bill in Parliament, without informing the president, that would allow a Supreme Court or high court judge to be sent on forced leave on a motion supported by 15% of the National Assembly.

* Bhutto and her government “have deliberately violated on a massive scale the fundamental right to privacy” through “illegal phone-tapping and eavesdropping techniques.”

* “Corruption, nepotism and violation of rules in the administration” have become so extensive that the orderly functioning of the government is impossible.

* A minister against whom criminal cases are pending has been inducted into Bhutto’s Cabinet. Interior Minister Naseerullah Babar has refused to withdraw the cases. A Cabinet in which one member is responsible for prosecuting another “cannot be collectively responsible in any manner whatsoever.”

Bhutto called an emergency meeting of her dismissed National Assembly members early today in Islamabad.

“The prime minister has received this letter from the president informing her that the National Assembly has been dissolved,” said Bhutto’s spokesman, Farhatullah Babar.

Bhutto, charismatic daughter of Pakistan’s first popularly elected leader, Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, clawed her way back to recapture the position of prime minister of the Muslim state in 1993.

Her first term had ended abruptly in 1990 after only 20 months--then, too, she was accused of runaway corruption.