NEW YORK, Feb 6: Pakistan People’s Party co-chairman Asif Ali Zardari on Wednesday made an impassioned appeal to US President Bush and congressional leaders from both parties to press Pakistan “for an independent UN investigation into his wife’s murder and “set the minimum standards for a free and fair election in Pakistan that the international community would find acceptable’’.

“Those standards would include an election administered by a neutral caretaker government and independent election commission -- one monitored by trained international observers with the authority to conduct exit polls to check on the government’s count, and to make spot, unannounced visits to any polling place,” said Mr Zardari in an article in the Los Angeles Times published on Wednesday.

He stressed that “an independent judiciary must be instituted through a bipartisan process. And the restrictions that smother the Pakistani media must be lifted”. ”I am not asking anyone to guarantee an outcome; neither did my wife. But the Pakistan People’s Party, or PPP, is asking the world to guarantee a free and open process. If the election is free and fair, we believe that our party will be able to establish a broad-based government with other democratic parties to promote national unity and reconciliation”, he stressed.

Regretting that “Washington remains painfully silent”, Mr Zardari observed that “by suggesting that an election under these dreadful conditions can be ‘good’ if not ‘perfect’, as a senior US State Department official claimed before the congress, many believed that the Bush administration had functionally given Musharraf and his cronies the green light to rig the election -- just don’t get caught red-handed”.

On terrorist attacks in the country, Mr Zardari charged: “ Instead of trying to mobilise the people to confront and contain terrorism, Musharraf is spending his time and energy trying to cling to power and rig the Feb 18 elections.”

“In 2002, Musharraf rigged parliamentary elections, despite the presence of teams of international observers, who did not hesitate to condemn the fraud,” he said.

Mr Zardari referred to the National Democratic Institute that had documented massive pre-election rigging, and the International Republican Institute was sufficiently appalled by the election environment that it pulled out of the country. Both are US-based, non-governmental organisations.