Former Pakistani premier Benazir Bhutto said on Sunday that President Pervez Musharraf’s declaration of Emergency rule would encourage extremists but refused to rule out power-sharing talks with him.

The two-time premier had been in talks with military ruler Musharraf for a power-sharing deal ahead of general elections scheduled for January. “People say I had a deal but in fact I had a negotiation with General Musharraf for the holding of free, fair and impartial elections,” Bhutto told the BBC.

Asked if she now felt cheated, she said: “I feel that maybe it was a decoy plan but it’s still too early to say and it all depends on whether General Musharraf restores the Constitution immediately and forms an independent election commission for the holding of fair, free and impartial elections.”

Asked specifically if she now rules out sharing power with Musharraf or working with him in Government, she added: “I have always maintained that I want democracy and I want the people of Pakistan to choose their own leaders. “Certainly, General Musharraf and I have had a very rocky relationship, even during the process of negotiation.”

A senior Pakistan People’s Party leader has claimed that Musharraf took the former premier into confidence before imposing Emergency. “The option of imposing Emergency and leaving the country on the orders of presidential camp was the agreed upon conditions in the deal between Benazir and Musharraf,” The News reported on Sunday, quoting the PPP leader as saying.

Bhutto, who returned to Pakistan from self-exile on October 18, had left for Dubai three days back to visit her “children and ailing mother”.

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