Police detain supporters of former Pakistan prime minister Benazir Bhutto outside her residence in Islamabad on Friday. Reuters

Bhutto later tried to leave her home in the capital and appealed to hundreds of police in riot gear to let her pass.

"Get out of the way. We are your sisters ... We have no hostility towards you," Bhutto, speaking through a megaphone, told police as her bullet-proof car tried to break through their ranks.

She failed to get through police barricades.

"She has been detained at home. This is temporary and is being done to stop her from going to the meeting," Railways Minister Sheikh Rashid Ahmed said.

Army chief Musharraf imposed emergency rule last Saturday, citing a hostile judiciary and rising militancy in the nuclear-armed US ally.

Ahmed said Bhutto's rally had been banned because of fears of suicide bomb attacks.

Islamist militants opposed to Bhutto's ties with the United States were believed to be responsible for a suicide bomb attack as she led a procession in Karachi to welcome her back to Pakistan on October 18. Nearly 140 people died in the attack.

Bhutto is demanding Musharraf set a date for a general election, steps down as army chief, restores the constitution and releases people detained since the weekend.

She had been planning to attend a rally in Rawalpindi, near Islamabad, but police were out in force early, erecting barbed-wire barricades on all roads leading to the park where the rally was planned and sealing off Bhutto's Islamabad home.

Musharraf said on Thursday that national elections would be held by Feburary 15, about a month later than they were due.

He also said he would quit as army chief and be sworn in as a civilian president once the Supreme Court ruled whether he had been eligible to stand for re-election last month while still army chief.

However, two-time prime minister Bhutto, who returned from more than eight years of self-imposed exile last month, said she wanted more than vague statements on the elections.

Bhutto has been holding power-sharing talks with Musharraf for months and political analysts say that despite her confrontation with the government this week, cooperation is still likely.

Bhutto had earlier said that in addition to the public meeting in Rawalpindi, she planned a mass motor procession from Lahore to the capital from November 13.

Officials say thousands of their activists have been detained over the past few days.

An Interior Ministry spokesman said 2,500 people had been detained since the emergency was declared.

Agencies

(China Daily 11/10/2007 page11)