KARACHI, Feb 11: Leading Benazir Bhutto’s party into a general election only a week away, the slain former prime minister’s widower says he is keeping open the option of working with President Pervez Musharraf until after the vote.

“We will cross this bridge when we come to it,” Asif Ali Zardari told Reuters in an interview on Monday at the family home-cum-campaign headquarters in Karachi.

Riding a wave of sympathy, the Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) appears on course to become the largest party in the National Assembly after the vote on Feb 18.

The PPP’s intentions will be key to President Musharraf’s survival. While it is not a presidential election, a hostile parliament could seek Mr Musharraf’s impeachment.

A survey released by the US-based International Republican Institute on Monday showed 50 per cent of respondents intended to vote for the PPP, while the Pakistan Muslim League (PML) that backs Mr Musharraf garnered just 14 per cent.

Neither Mr Zardari nor his 19-year-old son Bilawal, who were appointed joint-chairmen of the PPP in accordance with Ms Bhutto’s wishes, is standing in the election.

Mr Zardari, 51, didn’t rule out the possibility of becoming prime minister in the future, but he had other priorities first. “We have to get all the parties together, we have to get the people together and there’s a lot of development in democracy to be made, institutions of democracy to be built,” he said, surrounded by portraits and photographs of Ms Bhutto, whose personal office remained shut, just as she left it.

Mr Zardari appeared to suggest that it would be a decade before he would be ready for the premiership. “The tradition has been that the chairman of a political party has always been the prime minister in Pakistan... We can think about it maybe 10 years from now, but not at the moment.”

Worryingly for Mr Musharraf, Mr Zardari said he was working to build consensus with Nawaz Sharif.

In a move seen as a warning, the government said last month it would press on with a long-running money-laundering case against Mr Zardari in Geneva. Mr Zardari was a minister in one of Ms Bhutto’s governments but critics say he is a divisive figure, nicknaming him “Mr Ten per cent” because of corruption allegations. He spent 11 years in jail on graft and other charges. None of them were proved.

Rigging is the opposition parties’ greatest fear, and Mr Zardari said the PPP would have to decide whether to accept the poll results or call for agitation if it felt cheated.

“All democratic options are open to us after that and we have a right to do demonstrations, we have the right to call for a strike,” he said.

PPP loyalists blame Mr Musharraf for Ms Bhutto’s assassination in a gun and suicide bomb attack after a rally in Rawalpindi on Dec 27, saying he provided her with inadequate security.

Controversy still rages over whether Ms Bhutto was killed a bullet or by concussion caused by the subsequent bomb blast that killed more than 20 other people. Last week, a British police team backed the government’s version that it was a fatal head injury, but aides insist she was shot.

Mr Zardari wants a United Nations inquiry into the killing, but says exhuming the body to settle the point is “unnecessary”.

He said Bilawal and his two younger sisters were aware of the dangers of following their parents’ path into politics. “They know history, they’ve had a personal loss,” said Mr Zardari.

—Reuters