KARACHI, PAKISTAN, Aug. 18, Reuter: Opposition leader Benazir Bhutto vowed on Thursday to win political power for her party after the death of President Mohammad Zia Ul Haq, but offered an olive branch to Pakistan’s new leaders.

She praised acting President Ghulam Ishaq Khan, who replaced Zia after his death in a plane crash on Wednesday, for behaving with rest faint in the brief but tense period since he took office.

The constitution has been followed, Bhutto told a news conference. The Government could have imposed martial law, but this wasn’t done.

But Bhutto said the opposition ‘was confident of winning elections due in November. Her moderate tone was in sharp contrast with a resolution passed by her Pakistan’ people’s party (PPP) earlier in the day.

 Zia will be remembered as the man who… after 11 years of Repressive rule, left behind nothing ‘but debts and mortgages, hunger and unemployment, exploitation and discrimination, rags and corruption, the resolution said. Western diplomats in Islamabad were surprised by the tough language of the resolution at such a delicate stage in relations between the military and civilian politicians. Military leaders have ruled Pakistan for more than half its 41 years Of existence.

Bhutto congratulated her supporters for behaving with restraint since Zia’s military plane crashed on the Punjab plains killing all 30 people on board.

“No one wants to give any provocation,” she said. “Stability is the issue now. In the next months we will create an atmosphere of constitutional continuity.

Bhutto, daughter of former president Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, who was ousted by Zia in 1977 and executed two years later, said she had no personal feud with Zia.

She said her goal was the “achievement of an objective . . . democracy for Pakistan.”

She declined to speculate on the cause of the crash. Pakistani officials suspect the plane was downed by sabotage, either a bomb on board or an antiaircraft missile.

Bhutto also won a rare mention on state television’s main evening, news, devoted entirely to Zia’s death.

The television usually ignores the opposition leader, even when she drew crowds of up to a million on her return from Europe in 1986.

On Thursday night she was quoted in a list of other political figures for her comment that life and death were in the hands of Allah.

Article extracted from this publication >> August 26, 1988