LONDON, Nov 13: Britain has again urged President General Pervez Musharraf to indicate when the state of emergency in his country would be lifted.

Foreign Secretary David Miliband welcomed the president’s commitment to elections by January 9, but said “less welcome” was the “lack of clarity on when the state of emergency will end”.

He warned: “Current conditions stand in the way of free and fair elections.”

However, like the Commonwealth Ministerial Action Group (CMAG) which met here on Monday to consider Pakistan’s case, Mr Miliband also glaringly missed out saying anything about the restoration of the ‘dismissed’ chief justice Iftikhar Mohammad Chaudhry.

And the two also did not question Gen Musharraf’s attempts to have the new judges who took oath under the Provisional Constitution Order (PCO) to approve his candidature in uniform for the presidential elections which were held under the suspended constitution which, however, did not allow a serving general to contest elections though it had allowed General Musharraf to keep the two offices (president and the army chief) until November 15, 2007.

The CMAG has in effect extended the November 15 deadline for Gen Musharraf to give up the army post by almost a week allowing him time to get a favourable verdict from the court.

Meanwhile, the Times in an editorial on Tuesday said that Benazir Bhutto’s power to mobilise the masses was beyond dispute, “even if the crowd that greeted her in Karachi, on her return from eight years abroad, may have owed more to the party’s feudal machinery than to spontaneous adoration of its leader.”

The newspaper said for that reason she was probably an indispensable part of any solution to the present crisis.

“So, too, is Nawaz Sharif, leader of the rival Pakistan Muslim League (Nawaz), the deeply conservative mainstream party. And so is President Musharraf (or “another khaki”, as Pakistanis refer to generals who may succeed him). Even though these three people cannot stand to be in the same room together (apart from the spasms in which they decide that they might do deals), they are necessary players if Pakistan is to edge its way from military rule to democracy.

“Government officials said on Monday that under the state of emergency Ms Bhutto’s march could not take place, and they placed her under house arrest for a second time to prevent her attendance. Their justification is bankrupt...”