Attorney-general on Friday rejected a statement by a US-based rights group that said it had obtained a recording of him predicting next week's elections will be "massively rigged."
Human Rights Watch (HRW) said that in the audio recording Malik Qayyum appeared to be advising an unidentified person on what party the person should approach to become a candidate in the parliamentary poll.
"They will massively rig to get their own people to win. If you can get a ticket from these guys, take it," the voice on the recording says in Urdu, without identifying who would do the rigging. Qayyum said however that the allegation was "ridiculous... a conspiracy against Pakistan" and denied making the comment.
"It is a ridiculous allegation, totally baseless. I have never uttered these words," Qayyum told AFP. "Why should I? The election commission is holding free and fair elections and I support free and fair elections." HRW said the recording was made during a phone interview between the attorney general and a reporter in November 2007.
Qayyum took a call on another telephone and his side of that conversation was recorded, it said. But the attorney general said his brother was a member of the party of opposition leader Nawaz Sharif "so on the face of it is absolutely nonsense." "I am going to sue this organisation for defaming me, it's a conspiracy because I am close to President Pervez Musharraf.
They just want to hatch a conspiracy against Pakistan," Qayyum said. HRW director Brad Adams declined to respond to the attorney general's warning of legal action, saying, "the recording in the tape speaks for itself."
A spokesman for former premier Nawaz described the HRW recording as "shameful". "This is the evidence of what we have been saying for a long time, that the Musharraf regime has planned to rig the elections," Pakistan-Muslim League-N spokesman Ahsan Iqbal told AFP. The US State Department has predicted that some rigging was to be expected in the election process, while HRW has accused the election commission of lacking independence.
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