LONDON, July 10: Pakistan faces being taken over by religious militants if President Pervez Musharraf's “dictatorship” continues, former prime minister Benazir Bhutto warned on Tuesday.

Ms Bhutto, speaking after deadly battles at the Lal Masjid in Islamabad, said Musharraf had taken the right decision over the mosque siege, but said she was “frightened for the future of the people of Pakistan.”

“Unfortunately a military dictatorship needs the external crutch of a militant threat to justify its existence to the international community,” she told Britain's Sky News television.

“So dictatorship, in my view, fuels extremism rather than contains it and nothing proves that more than the emergence of the Red Mosque complex in the last five years in Islamabad,” she added.

Referring to upcoming elections, Ms Bhutto said: “If they are (Taliban forces) given five years more because elections this year are rigged, then we could really be facing the spectre of an Islamist takeover of Pakistan. She said: “The Red Mosque siege showed us how dangerous parts of Pakistan have become.” She said Musharraf had made the right decisions in the siege.

“I am glad there was no ceasefire with the militants in the mosque because ceasefires simply embolden the militants. There will be a backlash but at some time we have to stop appeasing the militants,” she said. “We can't afford to keep appeasing them.”

But Ms Bhutto said that Musharraf, who came to power after a coup in 1999, had exploited the West's need for Pakistan as an ally in the wake of the September 11, 2001, attacks in the United States.

“Unfortunately the regime was unable to deliver on its promise of building a true democracy and instead it exploited the international community's concern about terrorism,” she said.

The former prime minister lamented that militants “have thrived under the dictatorship of General Musharraf”. She was speaking after the radical cleric behind the uprising at the Lal Masjid, Abdul Rashid Ghazi, was killed as Pakistani troops fought day-long gun battles with his militant followers, leaving scores dead.—AFP