Transcript

Host: White House spokeswoman Dana Perino praised Pakistan for setting a definite date to hold parliamentary elections. Originally scheduled for January 8, the elections were postponed after the assassination of opposition leader and former prime minister Benazir Bhutto. The elections will now be held February 18.

Bhutto's nineteen-year-old son Bilawal Bhutto Zardari has been named as the future leader of her Pakistan People's Party. He says that if the government of President Pervez Musharraf were to rig the February elections, Pakistan "may disintegrate."

White House spokeswoman Perino said the U.S. hopes the people of Pakistan "will be able to participate in the process freely," and that "the people of Pakistan can decide the leadership that they want moving forward."

U-S State Department spokesman Tom Casey says the U-S supports free and fair elections in Pakistan as the best way to fight extremism and terrorism in the country:

Casey: "US policy is not to support any individuals in this. What we want to see happen is the development of a democratic system in Pakistan, the development of democratic institutions. And one of the key ways to ensure that the Pakistani people have a government that reflects their will and has a government that is capable of fighting extremism, both in the interests of Pakistan as well as the broader international community, is to have elections take place in which that will can be expressed and have a government emerge from that that does have popular support and legitimacy."

Host: In the wake of Benazir Bhutto's murder, U-S Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice urged "the Pakistani people, political leaders, and civil society to maintain calm and to work together to build a more moderate, peaceful, and democratic future."

What are the prospects for a democratic future in Pakistan? And what is the U-S doing to encourage the development of democracy there? I'll ask my guests: Farhana Ali, Associate International Policy Analyst at the RAND corporation; foreign affairs correspondent for Time magazine: Brian Bennett; and joining us from our New York studio: Tunku Varadarajan, a professor at the Stern School at New York University and a fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University; and joining us by phone from London: Irfan Husain, a columnist for The Dawn and The Daily Times newspapers. Welcome.