Pakistan's prime minister says national elections will be held as scheduled, despite President Pervez Musharraf's declaration of emergency rule.

Elections are due by mid-January, but there were fears they might be abandoned because of the crisis.

Police have broken up street protests and hundreds of lawyers and opposition activists have been arrested.

The US said it was "deeply disturbed" by events and urged Gen Musharraf to return to civilian rule.

The Pakistani president said he had declared the emergency to stop the country "committing suicide", because the country was in a crisis caused by militant violence and an unruly judiciary.

Critics, however, believe Gen Musharraf was acting to pre-empt a judgment by the Supreme Court on whether his re-election last month was legal.

Election timetable

The government had suggested parliamentary polls could be delayed by up to a year.

But Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz said on Monday that: "The next general elections will be held according to the schedule."

Attorney-General Malik Abdul Qayyum was more specific.

"It has been decided there will be no delay in the election and by 15 November these assemblies will be dissolved and the election will be held within the next 60 days," he told Reuters news agency.

Pakistan had come under heavy international pressure after Gen Musharraf imposed emergency rule on Saturday.

"We believe that the best path for Pakistan is to quickly return to a constitutional path and then to hold elections," US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said during a visit to the Middle East.

She urged Gen Musharraf to fulfill his pledge to step down as head of the army and return the country to civilian rule.

But on Monday, the general gave his clearest indication yet that he was unlikely to give up his military post soon, even though he had been scheduled to do so this month.

He told foreign diplomats in Islamabad that he would give up his military post "once we correct these pillars in judiciary and the executive and the parliament", according to comments broadcast on state-run television.

'Further steps'

The US has suspended defense co-operation talks with Pakistan set for this week and says it will review its multi-billion dollar aid program.

The UK, another major donor, says it is examining whether the emergency will affect its aid to Pakistan.

British Foreign Secretary David Miliband said the announcement that elections would go ahead was welcome, but it must be accompanied by civilian rule and political freedoms.

The Netherlands became the first country to suspend aid, and the EU said its members were considering "possible further steps".

In Lahore on Monday an estimated 2,000 lawyers congregated to stage a rally protesting at the dismissal of top judges and restrictions on the judiciary, but several were reported wounded when police waded in with tear gas and baton charges.

Lawyers chanting anti-Musharraf slogans at a demonstration in Karachi were dragged off into police vans, says the BBC's M Ilyas Khan.

Demonstrations were also broken up in Rawalpindi.

House arrest

Lawyers' associations across the country said they were calling three days of protests and boycotts of courts.

Media reports, citing police and interior ministry sources, said some 1,500 people had been arrested in the past 48 hours, while many top judges were effectively under house arrest.

The Islamic party Jamaat-e-Islami was among the groups targeted.

Its leader, Qazi Hussain Ahmed, was under arrest, as were hundreds of members, the party said.

Information Minister Tariq Azim called those figures an exaggeration.

He told the BBC that it was up to protesters to remain calm, or deal with the consequences.

"If people take the law into their [own] hands, obviously, they have to be dealt with," he told the World Today.

Pakistani TV news channels, which have huge audiences, are being prevented from broadcasting within the country, and at least one newspaper press was raided by police.

PHOTO CAPTION

Many lawyers protesting in Lahore were dragged away by police