Pakistani voters must defeat Islamists : Musharraf

ISLAMABAD, Dec 6 (Reuters) Hardline Islamic groups must be defeated in Pakistan's next election, President Pervez Musharraf said, but at the same time, he vowed to keep the leaders of two main moderate parties out of the polls.

Musharraf, who seized power in a bloodless military coup in 1999, is widely expected to preside over a general election that he said would be held between November next year and January 2008 -- the second under his rule.

He is also expected to secure another term in office next year.

The president is elected by the national parliament and provincial assemblies and Musharraf has said the current assemblies, where his supporters hold a majority, can vote for president.

In an interview with India's NDTV, to be broadcast today, Musharraf -- a major ally in the U S-led war on terrorism -- said moderate forces must win the election.

''Moderate forces, enlightened forces, must win against these religious elements ... obscurantists ... I call them,'' he said, according to a transcript of the interview obtained by Reuters today.

But he also said the leaders of the two main moderate parties -- former prime ministers Benazir Bhutto and Nawaz Sharif -- would be barred from the polls.

The two exiled politicians want to return but Musharraf has refused, accusing them of corruption, which both of them deny.

Sharif was sentenced to life in prison on a hijacking charge in 2000 but Musharraf commuted the sentence and sent him into exile in Saudi Arabia.

Bhutto has been convicted of failing to appear in court to answer corruption charges.

''No,'' Musharraf said when asked if the opposition leaders would be standing in the vote. ''Firstly, one of them is convicted. The other is also convicted. Both of them are actually convicted.'' (''THEY MUST BE DEFEATED'') Pakistan's Islamist groups have traditionally fared poorly in elections. Prior to 2002, they had never won more than a dozen seats.

But they made spectacular gains in a 2002 election, partly because of widespread anti-U S feeling after the U S-led invasion of neighbouring Afghanistan the previous year.

The Islamist parties won power in one province and a share of power in another, and become the main opposition bloc in the national parliament.

Musharraf said the time had come for the those gains to be reversed.

''They must go down to the level where they were before. They never had more than three to four per cent. Now they have about 17 or 18 per cent in the assemblies. They are running one of the provinces. They must be defeated.'' But an analyst said Musharraf's efforts to marginalise the Islamists without allowing the two popular leaders back into politics was a contradiction.

''By sidelining the leadership of the mainstream political parties he would create a vacuum that is most likely to be filled by the hardline groups, as it was in the past,'' said Talat Masood, a former army general and analyst.

''This is a big contradiction.'' REUTERS LL BS1631