NEW PAKISTAN LEADERS SWORN IN; BHUTTO SHUNNED.

Byline: Kathy Gannon Associated Press 

Ousted Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto was being treated like a criminal Tuesday, isolated and surrounded by armed soldiers while new leaders were sworn in to run a country beset by violence and corruption.

The statement President Farooq Leghari released to explain his decision to fire Bhutto and her Cabinet read like a charge sheet, accusing her of sanctioning police hit squads, allowing corruption to run rampant and trying to weaken the judicial system.

The president took action before dawn Tuesday, naming Miraj Khalid, a former assembly speaker who resigned in 1990 after clashing with Bhutto, as interim prime minister. Leghari set new elections for Feb. 3, nearly two years before Bhutto's term was to have ended.

The National Assembly also was dismissed.

Khalid was sworn in Tuesday afternoon, along with nine Cabinet ministers, most of them retired bureaucrats or politicians. Six more ministers were to be sworn in later.

Leghari, in a national television address late Tuesday, pledged that the interim government would cut spending and explore ways to reduce corruption.

Reaction to Bhutto's second ouster in six years was subdued. Bhutto, once celebrated as a champion of democracy, no longer inspires the fervent support she counted on in the 1980s during her campaigns against military dictatorship in Pakistan.

Soldiers with assault rifles guarded the gates of her official residence in the capital, just a few yards from where her successor was being sworn in.

Bhutto ``wants to meet with her party people, her central committee, the press, but she can't,'' said Aftab Sherpao, a member of Bhutto's Pakistan People's Party.

Sherpao said Bhutto hasn't decided whether to challenge her dismissal in the Supreme Court, but such a move seemed likely. She fought off a similar challenge in 1990 by launching street protests that toppled the government. She regained power in 1993.

``You know she's a fighter,'' Sherpao said. ``She has faced adverse situations before.''

In Washington, State Department spokesman Nicholas Burns said the United States looked forward to ``maintaining good relations with Pakistan.''

He said Bhutto's removal was in accordance with Pakistan's constitution, and that the United States hopes ``constitutional processes will be followed.''

Bhutto was repeatedly jailed or placed under house arrest in the 1980s. She was under virtual house arrest Tuesday, while her husband, Investment Minister Asif Ali Zardari, was reportedly jailed along with 20 other members of their Pakistan People's Party. Zardari has been implicated in a number of scandals.

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