Former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto, who returned last month from eight years abroad after Musharraf gave her immunity from old graft charges, flew to Islamabad to meet other Opposition leaders but said she would not meet let alone negotiate with him.

Opposition politicians, including Bhutto, have denounced emergency rule but have taken no concrete action so far, leaving public protests to the lawyers -- hundreds of whom have been beaten with police batons and arrested.

Asked as she boarded her plane in Karachi if she would negotiate with General Musharraf, whose Emergency rule drew widespread international condemnation, to join a caretaker government, she said: "No and nor do I intend to meet Musharraf."

The United States had hoped Bhutto would end up sharing power with Musharraf after elections due in January. The former Prime Minister has been consulting other Opposition leaders on the most serious crisis since the army chief seized power in a 1999 coup.

She has denounced the Emergency as 'mini-martial law', but she has yet to mobilise her supporters on the streets.

US President George W Bush, who values Musharraf as an ally in his battle against al-Qaeda and the Taliban, urged the general on Monday to lift the Emergency he had imposed on Saturday, hold elections and quit as army chief.

RAZOR WIRE

Troops in Islamabad manned razor-wire checkpoints near the Presidential palace, Parliament and Supreme Court on Tuesday. In Karachi, police vetted lawyers trying to enter the High Court.

Police in the Central city of Multan used batons to beat more than a dozen stone-throwing lawyers chanting 'Go Musharraf Go' before bundling them into trucks, a Reuters witness said.

A dozen more were detained at the High Court in the eastern city of Lahore, according to a Reuters photographer, but a protest by about 200 lawyers in Islamabad passed off peacefully.

Declaration of the Emergency was seen as an attempt by Musharraf to stop any chance of the Supreme Court invalidating his re-election as President by Parliament last month on the grounds that he stood while still army chief.

After dismissing judges who were too difficult to handle, Musharraf has been filling the Supreme Court benches with more amenable figures. Four more were sworn in on Tuesday, taking the total to 9 -- well short of the original strength of 17.

The imposition of Emergency rule had raised considerable doubts over whether Parliamentary elections, expected in January, would go ahead as scheduled.

A stock market that dropped 4.6 per cent on Monday -- its largest daily fall in terms of points -- as Emergency rule scared investors, fell early on Tuesday before recovering ground to rise about 1.1 per cent by mid-afternoon.

Standard & Poor's said it had revised its credit ratings outlook on Pakistan from stable to negative.

Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz said on Monday polls would be held on schedule, but Musharraf himself has yet to confirm this.

Attorney-General Malik Abdul Qayyum said the National and provincial assemblies would be dissolved on Nov. 15, completing their terms, and an election would take place by mid-January.

"Elections will be held, will be held on time and the tenure (of the Assemblies) is not being extended for a year," close Musharraf ally Chaudhry Pervez Elahi, the chief minister of Punjab province and a possible future Prime Minister, told a televised news conference in the eastern city of Lahore.

There was no indication of when Musharraf would lift emergency rule, which he justified by citing a hostile judiciary and rising militancy.