Friday, January 27 2006 11:42 Hrs (IST) - World Time -

Washington: Former Pakistani Prime Minster Benazir Bhutto says an international notice seeking her arrest on corruption charges is an act of state-sponsored persecution by a military dictator.

Pakistani President Gen. Pervez Musharraf, who seized power in a bloodless coup in 1999, ordered the Interpol 'red notices' to divert attention from domestic questions about the government's alleged role in a Jan. 13 U.S. missile strike that killed at least 13 civilians, Bhutto said yesterday (Jan 26,2006) after the notices were announced.

"I've spent nine years of my life facing state-sponsored persecution," said Bhutto, who was prime minister in the late 1980s to 1996 and who now lives in exile in Britain and the United Arab Emirates.

"The regime doesn't like me to speak up about democracy, .so they keep threatening me with jail terms," she said.

Pakistan has condemned the air strikes, saying Washington failed to notify Islamabad of the attempt to take out a leader of the al-Qaida terror group. Bhutto suggested that critics in Pakistan were questioning whether Musharraf knew of the strikes in advance, and that was why the Interpol notices were pursued.

Interpol officials said it was up to member countries to decide what, if any, action to take about the notices. A U.S. Justice Department official would not comment on the matter yesterday.

Pakistan's Interior Minister Aftab Khan Sherpao said the Government's anti-corruption body had asked Interpol to issue the notices for Bhutto and her husband, Asif Ali Zardari, both of whom are wanted in Pakistan in connection with several graft cases. \

Zardari was released on bail last year after spending eight years in detention on corruption charges in what had been seen as a move toward rapprochement between Bhutto and Musharraf.

Bhutto, who leads the opposition Pakistan People's Party, told an audience at Voice of America that her lawyer was seeking details of the Interpol notices, which she said she learned of through the press.

"As far as I'm concerned, if any court wants me in Pakistan, I'm prepared to catch the next plane,'' she said.

Bhutto, during her speech, also blasted Musharraf's Government for allowing the army and religious extremists to rise to power unchecked.

Religious parties with ties to al-Qaida and Taliban insurgents, she said, have "Filled the vacuum caused by the military regime's determination to sideline the secular, liberal and democratic forces of Pakistan.''

Bhutto appealed to foreign governments to encourage democratic elections in Pakistan.

"The choice to sustain dictatorship in Pakistan has consequences, both in the long term and in the short term, that threaten the interests of the West, as well as the values of democracy in the East,'' she said.

"A military dictatorship in Pakistan, Washington's key ally, sends the wrong message to more than 1 billion Muslims across the world,'' she said.

Bhutto was democratically elected twice, but both of her Governments were removed in questionable circumstances, most recently in 1996, because of alleged misrule and corruption. She left Pakistan in 1999, accusing her archrival and political successor, former Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, of fabricating the corruption charges against her.

Musharraf became President the same year by moving against Sharif.