ISLAMABAD, Pakistan — Pakistan's Supreme Court, newly stacked with allies of President Pervez Musharraf, dismissed most of the challenges to his re-election Monday, but opposition leaders rejected the ruling as engineered and illegitimate, the latest controversy in the country's ongoing political crisis.

Deliberating for just under three hours, the judges, many of them handpicked by Musharraf, struck down the five main challenges to his re-election. The sixth and final petition will be heard Thursday, though that case was also expected to be dismissed.

Pakistani opposition parties had asserted that Musharraf was ineligible to seek re-election last month while also serving as chief of the army. The Supreme Court was scheduled to hear challenges in the case when Musharraf fired several justices and proclaimed emergency rule Nov. 3.

After the court clears all of the challenges to his re-election, Musharraf has promised to resign as head of the country's military and become a civilian president.

On Monday, the president also said he was asking the country's electoral commission to call parliamentary elections for Jan. 8. Opposition leaders have said the elections would be deeply flawed and unfair if conducted during emergency rule. Hundreds of political leaders remain jailed, and independent TV new stations have been blacked out.

In a rare public appearance, Musharraf insisted he was the only leader who could safeguard the country as Islamic extremists increase attacks in the northwest.

"I could have said thank you and walked away. But this was not the right approach because I cannot watch this country go down in front of me after so many achievements and such an economic turnaround," he said at a groundbreaking ceremony for a new highway and bridge project in the southern city of Karachi.

Deputy Secretary of State John Negroponte held talks with Musharraf over the weekend in an attempt to persuade him to end emergency rule, restore the constitution and free political opponents. But there was no indication Musharraf would bend to the growing U.S. pressure.

In Karachi, U.S. Ambassador Anne Patterson met with opposition leader and former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto, who has aborted U.S.-backed plans to form a political alliance with Musharraf. The two are no longer speaking.

"I am meeting the former prime minister and other political leaders to confirm American interest in free, fair and transparent elections and to assure her and all others that we will do everything possible to ensure that the electoral process takes place," Patterson told reporters.

Bhutto said she was frustrated the Bush administration had not made lifting the emergency a condition of continuing aid to Pakistan. Washington has delivered $10 billion in military aid to Musharraf's government since 2001 to help train and arm the Pakistani military in its fight against terrorists.

"If the United States gives him $10 billion and does not get him to do what it wants, how is it going to expect us to make him do what he does not want to do?" Bhutto said.

In a separate development, Imran Khan, an opposition leader who was jailed by the government last week, began a hunger strike to protest emergency rule. Khan, leader of the Pakistan Justice Movement, is a former cricket star and an icon for students opposed to Musharraf's government. His party members said they hoped his hunger strike would encourage young people to keep protesting emergency rule.

"This is the only tool Khan has left to tell the world about the suffering of Pakistan," Hafeez Niazi, Khan's brother-in-law, said in a telephone interview from Lahore. "He feels this is the only way to bring attention to the issue now."

Opposition political leaders have also said they are considering a boycott of the elections.

"The elections will be a ruse and a joke all over the world. The U.S. has been cheated, and the Pakistani people will suffer, yet again," said Farid Ahmed Paracha, deputy secretary general of Pakistan's most popular Islamic party, Jamaat-e-Islami.