Since she won office four years ago, she has helped improve the water supply and sanitation, set up a new vocational training center for women and provided wheelchairs for the disabled.

Yet she's been afraid to campaign this week after receiving threats from opponents who, like many religious hard-liners in the country's conservative northwest, prefer women to play no part in politics -- either as candidates or voters.

Bukhari, 48, a university graduate and mother of four who runs a women's development charity near the region's main city, Peshawar, says supporters of some rival candidates paid her an unwelcome home visit on Sunday.

"They even threatened me not to campaign and bring females to the polling stations, otherwise bloodshed will occur," she told The Associated Press. "I am so harassed and worried. Now I cannot campaign openly."

Pakistan often comes under fire for its record on women's rights, particularly for letting violent crimes against women go unpunished.

Yet it has actively promoted women's participation in politics, and in 1988 was the first Muslim country to elect a female prime minister, Benazir Bhutto [Images] -- now an exiled opposition leader.

Sixty of 342 seats in the National Assembly are reserved for women, as are nearly one third of the 79,651 council seats being contested in the municipal polls, to be held in three phases in late August and September.

But particularly in the conservative North West Frontier Province, bordering Afghanistan, hundreds of the women's council seats are going uncontested. Pashtun tribal tradition dictates that communal decisions are made in exclusively male tribal 'jirgas' or gatherings. It's considered dishonorable for women to mix with men outside immediate family or to venture much outside the home.

Rahmat Hussain, an elder from Shaikhan village south of Peshawar said a jirga he headed decided families in the village would be fined 100,000 rupees (US$1,675) if any of its women voted.

"It is against our tradition to send women outside to cast votes," he said.

Bukhari disagrees with that observance.

"The participation of women in politics is neither against Islam nor our culture ... If women can work in fields or bring water from miles away, why can't they work for the solution to their problems?" she said.

A candidate in the same district as Bukhari, Israrullak Khan, denied there was a pact among candidates to exclude women from voting there. "We have a great respect for women," he said.

The North West Frontier Province government is led by a religious coalition, the Mutahida Majlis-e-Amal (MMA) or United Action Forum, that has taken some steps to implement Shariah, or Islamic law, such as banning music on public buses and prohibiting male doctors from treating female patients.

It also wants to set up a religious police force to monitor media, government officials and even observance of prayer times -- although the Supreme Court has ruled that many parts of the proposal are unconstitutional.

The MMA, however, defends its widely criticized record on women's rights, saying it has set up a women's university and provides free education, schoolbooks and uniforms to both boys and girls up to 10th grade.

"We have given more rights to the women than any other area of the country," said Chief Minister Akram Khan Durrani, the province's top elected official, who guaranteed that women would be free to vote and run for office.

Shazia Tehmas, 28, a female councilor in Peshawar, said that despite continuing discrimination, more women were now prepared to defy tradition, contest elections and join local government. Of 12 districts in the province set to vote Thursday, only 104 seats are set to remain vacant, compared with 910 after the last poll in 2001, she said.

The situation, however, appears less encouraging in outlying, less-developed regions of the province that will vote later in the month. In Kohistan district there are 152 council seats for women up for grabs -- but no women are standing for office there.

The national election commission has warned that anyone preventing women from participating in the vote will be prosecuted and elections in such cases nullified.

More reports from Pakistan