page_title: Benazir Bhutto
section_title: Negotiating a return to Pakistan: 2006–07
hierarchical_section_title: Benazir Bhutto / Later life / Negotiating a return to Pakistan: 2006–07
caption_attribution_description: English: Benazir Bhutto interview during Socialist International meeting in 2007
context_page_description: Benazir Bhutto was a Pakistani politician who served as Prime Minister of Pakistan from 1988 to 1990 and again from 1993 to 1996. She was the first woman to head a democratic government in a Muslim majority nation. Ideologically a liberal and a secularist, she chaired or co-chaired the Pakistan Peoples Party from the early 1980s until her assassination in 2007.
  Of mixed Sindhi and Kurdish parentage, Bhutto was born in Karachi to a politically important, wealthy aristocratic family. She studied at Harvard University and the University of Oxford, where she was President of the Oxford Union. Her father, the PPP leader Zulfikar Bhutto, was elected Prime Minister on a socialist platform in 1973. She returned to Pakistan in 1977, shortly before her father was ousted in a military coup and executed. Bhutto and her mother Nusrat took control of the PPP and led the country's Movement for the Restoration of Democracy; Bhutto was repeatedly imprisoned by Muhammad Zia-ul-Haq's military government and then exiled to Britain in 1984.
context_section_description: The US and UK had supported Musharraf because of his role in assisting their War on Terror—especially the War in Afghanistan—but they gradually lost faith in his ability to rule successfully. His domestic popularity was slipping; a mid-2007 poll gave him only a 26% approval rating. In 2007, mass anti-Musharraf protests broke out in what was known as the Lawyers' Movement. Pakistan was also experiencing growing levels of violence from Islamist militants, such as the Siege of Lal Masjid. Official figures held that eight suicide bombings took place in 2006 and 44 in 2007. The US government increasingly saw Bhutto as an important figure who could help to constrain Pakistan's domestic problems. They nevertheless wanted a power-sharing deal and did not want Musharraf removed from power completely, regarding him as a vital ally in their War on Terror.
  Assisted by Luis Ayala, the secretary-general of the Socialist International, in 2006 Bhutto and Sharif began a process of reconciliation.  Ayala believed that this was a prerequisite for ensuring Pakistan's transition back to democratic elections. Both Bhutto and Sharif had residences in London, not far from one another. Facilitated by the lawyer Aitzaz Ahsan, the pair developed a joint plan of action. In May 2006 they both signed a Charter of Democracy, a document calling for an end to military rule. They established a committee consisting of four Pakistani senators, two from the PPP and two from the Pakistan Muslim League (Nawaz). Henceforth, Bhutto avoided openly criticizing Sharif as she once had.
  Concerned about the instability of their ally, the US government pushed Musharraf to meet with Bhutto and come to an arrangement that might strengthen his legitimacy. This was also encouraged by the UK government. In January 2007, Musharraf held his first meeting with Bhutto at a hotel in Abu Dhabi, followed by further talks in June. As a result of their discussions, it was agreed that the Pakistani authorities would drop all charges of corruption against both Bhutto and her husband. This was achieved through the introduction of the National Reconciliation Ordinance, a measure which nullified all pending criminal proceedings against politicians. The Ordinance also lifted Musharraf's ban on individuals serving more than two terms as Prime Minister.
  It was agreed that if Musharraf stepped down from his military positions and was elected as a civilian President, then Bhutto would be willing to serve under him as Prime Minister. Many of Musharraf's close allies had reservations about his concessions to Bhutto.
  The US' Condoleezza Rice and the UK's Jack Straw worked together to ensure a transition back to electoral democracy in Pakistan. The UK and Spain both dropped criminal investigations into Bhutto's corruption, although Switzerland refused to do so. In August 2007, the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, Zalmay Khalizad, had several meetings with Bhutto in New York City. There, Bhutto also gave a public talk at the Council of Foreign Relations. Bhutto and Khalizad also traveled to a luncheon in Aspen, Colorado to meet with prominent U.S. political and business leaders. In October 2007, Musharraf was elected President by Pakistan's parliament. In keeping with the agreement made by Bhutto and Musharraf, the PPP representatives abstained rather than voting against Musharraf's nomination.
  The US publisher HarperCollins paid Bhutto half a million dollars to produce a book, to be titled Reconciliation. Co-written with the U.S. political scientist and journalist Mark Siegel, it would be published in 2008 as Reconciliation: Islam, Democracy and the West. Reconciliation was partly a response to the Clash of Civilizations theory that had been popularised by the American political scientist Samuel P. Huntington during the 1990s. She argued that Huntington's theory denied the universality of democratic ideals and created a "self-fulfilling prophecy of fear" whereby it provoked the conflicts that it claimed to predict. In Reconciliation she proposed that Western countries finance a new "Marsh
caption: Bhutto being interviewed during the Socialist International meeting in 2007.
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