JEDDAH Saudi Arabia; Pakistan’s President Mohammad Zia U! Hag, in remarks published today, said opposition leader Benazir Bhutto was in a hurry to assume power, but there were no plans to bring forward elections scheduled for 1990.

Miss Bhutto, leader of the Pakistan People’s Party, wants power and is in a hurry to become president or Prime Minister, Zia told Saudi Arabia’s English language daily Arab news.

But she will not succeed as the government insists that she will have to play according to the rules of the political game, which will include general elections in 1990, he added.

He said there was no prospect of advancing the election date and warned that people who fomented widespread rioting and destruction of public property would be punished.

But he told the Saudi Gazette that he saw no reason to reinstate martial law, despite a wave of political violence which has killed at least 19 people in the last 10 days, Zia returned to Pakistan after performing the annual Moslem pilgrimage to Mecca and Medina in Saudi Arabia. He told the Gazette that a small minority of saboteurs instigated by several foreign powers was behind the latest unrest, which he said would be over within three weeks. He declined to name the foreign powers he had in mind. Bhutto, daughter of executed former Pakistani President Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, was among scores of opposition leaders arrested in Zia’s absence, in the biggest roundup of critics since he lifted martial Jaw last December.

“Miss Bhutto, looking for an. opportunity, wanted to cash in on the state of freedom that followed the lifting of martial law”, he said, quoted by Arab news.

Zia endorsed actions by Prime Minister Mohammad Khan Junejo to quell the latest political protests, but said he had not specifically ordered them as constitutional head of state, “cannot ask the Prime Minister to do this or that,” he said.

Said the extent of rioting had been exaggerated abroad, and trouble was now confined to southern Sind province.

But he admitted that the situation was bad in some areas. See people go and burn down a police station and railway tracks, it is bad, It means law enforcing agencies have failed”, he said in the Arab news interview.

Zia said he was temporarily retaining his post as army Chief of Staff. “I tell you, nobody minds it)” he declared,

The government crackdown began when the ten party movements for the restoration of democracy (MRD) defied a ban on political rallies on independence  day, August 14,

Troops were used to control rampaging crowds in Sind two days later, the first Kruse of the army to stop riots since 1983.

The five year old MRD wants Zia to step down and fresh elections to be held by the end of this year.

Article extracted from this publication >> August 29, 1986