ISLAMABAD, Pakistan —  The likely next president of unstable, nuclear-armed Pakistan following Saturday's election is a horse-loving aristocrat who has spent more years in prison than in politics _ a novice leader lifted to prominence by his marriage to Benazir Bhutto and propelled into power by her murder.

Asif Ali Zardari, the man poised to replace America's longtime ally, Gen. Pervez Musharraf, carries the baggage of years of corruption charges and a mixed record on confronting the looming threat of the resurgent Taliban movement tightening its grip on Pakistan's border regions and possibly sheltering the al-Qaida leadership.

Like his wife, Zardari has been branded as supremely corrupt and pursued through the courts by foes including Musharraf. A decade in jail damaged his health _ perhaps even his mind _ though he was never convicted.

Now, eight months after Bhutto's assassination in a gun-and-bomb attack, his trademark grin is back and likely to beam again below his trim salt-and-pepper mustache after Saturday's presidential vote by legislators.

Having seized control of Bhutto's political party, Pakistan's biggest, the 53-year-old seems set for a comfortable win in a three-way tussle with a senator from the main pro-Musharraf party and a retired judge backed by another former premier, Nawaz Sharif.

Zardari's bid to succeed U.S. ally Musharraf is only the latest switchback in Pakistan's dizzying return to a semblance of democratic government after nine years of military rule.

Once described by his wife as a man with no interest in party politics, he now stands to become one of the most powerful civilian leaders in the nation's turbulent 61-year history.

The president can dissolve parliament and appoint army chiefs, and chairs the joint civilian-military committee that controls Pakistan's nuclear weapons.

Since engineering Musharraf's ouster with threats of impeachment, Zardari and senior party lieutenants have matched the former general's tough line against terrorism, insisting the battle against Islamic militants along the Afghan border is Pakistan's war.

That plays well in Washington, but the test will be how much clout he wields over the military, whose stop-start battles with militants along the border have failed to halt the rising strength of the Taliban.

Pakistan's ambassador in London, Wajid Hassan, pleaded with the West to give the new government to implement plans to tackle the Taliban threat, suggesting in an interview with The Associated Press that military force could backfire by turning people against the authorities, while persuasion might work better.

"We want to get them down off the fence and onto our side," he said of Pakistanis harboring Taliban in the border areas. He outlined expensive and ambitious reforms that would include economic and education incentives. At the moment, he said, Taliban supporters are getting paid more than Pakistani soldiers.

To pull off such a program, in a nation of 160 million riven by ethnic and sectarian tensions as well as vast disparities in wealth, will be an early test of Zardari's leadership skills.

Until his arranged marriage to Bhutto in 1987, Zardari was the unremarkable son of a landowning businessman and tribal chief from the southern province of Sindh.

Like many of this Muslim country's elite, he attended Christian missionary schools and a top boarding school on the banks of the Indus River near Hyderabad. He has claimed to hold a bachelor's degree from a business school in London, but his party has been unable to produce a certificate or establish what he studied.

Winning the hand of Bhutto, daughter of Pakistan's most prominent political family, cemented his reputation as a charmer. Bhutto said he was gallant and caring, recalling how he once rushed her to the hospital with a bee sting, and appreciated the fact that he understood that politics would dominate her attention.

However, Zardari says he had little idea of the political storm that went along with the marriage.

"It spun my life," Zardari told the BBC this year. "I had no idea, because I didn't know what this world was."

It was a sharp learning curve.

Zardari was quickly accused of meddling in the affairs of Bhutto's Pakistan People's Party and sidelining party stalwarts in favor of cronies. He served as minister for the environment and investment in the second of her two governments, each of which was dismissed before the end of its term for corruption and misrule.

Foes and many ordinary Pakistanis still refer to him as Mr. Ten Percent, because of allegations that he pocketed commissions on government contracts for everything from a license to import gold to the purchase of 8,000 Polish tractors.

At one point, the couple was accused of spiriting $1.5 billion out of the country. Zardari was charged with murder in the mysterious shooting death of Bhutto's estranged brother. He was accused of spending state money on polo ponies _ and the apples to feed them at the prime minister's residence.

He endured about 11 years in jail in two spells as well as marathon court proceedings. But he was never convicted at home or in corruption and money-laundering investigations in Britain, Spain and Switzerland.

Zardari insists the cases were politically motivated attempts _ first by archrival Nawaz Sharif, later by Musharraf and the military-dominated establishment he represented _ to demonize his wife and prevent her return from self-imposed exile in Dubai and London.

When she did come back last October, it was under an ill-fated power-sharing deal with Musharraf, who ordered an amnesty covering all corruption cases pending from Bhutto's terms of office.

Zardari did not initially follow her home. He spent much of the time after his release from jail in 2004 in New York and reportedly received treatment for ailments including heart and back problems that his aides attributed to his prolonged incarceration.

In a court case in London, his lawyers even argued he had suffered stress-induced mental illness _ though supporters insist he has made a full recovery and is fit to be president.

Having rushed home to bury Bhutto, Zardari revealed his political steel in taking the reins of her party and leading it to victory in February parliamentary elections.

Zardari shares Bhutto's liberal, pro-Western outlook. He has spoken wistfully of a more tolerant age, before al-Qaida and Islamic extremism infected Pakistan, when women would ride bicycles through the streets of Karachi.

The couple's eldest son Bilawal, already earmarked to take over the party, is following in his mother's footsteps by studying at Oxford University.

By outmaneuvering Sharif, who last month quit the ruling coalition after accusing Zardari of duplicity, Zardari showed a shrewdness that has impressed many, and some are willing to wait and see whether he can stabilize Pakistan _ and whether he has learned from any sins in his past.

He may lack Bhutto's charisma, but his gender may be a plus in dealing with the Taliban-infested tribal areas, said Hassan, the London ambassador.

"In those tribal areas where male chauvinism is still order of the day, he will be more acceptable to them," he said in an interview.

"Even his worst enemies couldn't prove anything against him," said Javaidur Rehman, a businessman in Multan who organizes trade fairs for foreign investors. "Everyone is full of mistakes, but we should not doubt his sincerity. His family has made too many sacrifices."

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Associated Press Writer Paisley Dodds in London contributed to this report.

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