Pakistan coalition parties to hold more talks
DUBAI/ISLAMABAD (Reuters) - Leaders of Pakistan's coalition parties made progress in talks to save the month-old government on Wednesday but will meet again on Thursday to try and resolve remaining issues, officials said.
Former Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif rushed to Dubai to meet Asif Ali Zardari after their aides failed to settle differences over reinstating judges deposed by President Pervez Musharraf during a period of emergency rule six months ago.
Some officials of Sharif's Pakistan Muslim League (Nawaz), or PML (N), have hinted their ministers could quit Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gilani's cabinet over the matter.
Any coalition cracks would heighten concern that nuclear-armed Pakistan, a U.S. ally under Musharraf, will suffer prolonged political instability at a time of challenges from Islamist militants and acute economic problems.
Sharif, overthrown by Musharraf in a 1999 military coup, wants the judges to be reinstated immediately as part of a strategy to drive Musharraf from office but the PPP leadership would like to avoid an early confrontation with the president.
"A lot of progress has been made ... There is consensus on most issues but difference of opinion on some legal and constitutional matters," Chaudhry Nisar Ali Khan, a senior minister and close aide to Sharif, told reporters in Dubai.
"The fact of the matter is that a final decision on the issue will be made tomorrow and I can say that very categorically," Khan said at the hotel where the two sides met for seven hours.
Having defeated Musharraf's allies in a parliamentary election in February, Zardari -- who succeeded his late wife Benazir Bhutto as head of the Pakistan People's Party (PPP) -- forged a post-election alliance with Sharif.
REVIVE CHALLENGES
Restoration of the judges could revive challenges to Musharraf's re-election by the last parliament while still army chief. The coalition parties aim to amend the constitution to strip Musharraf of presidential powers to dismiss the government, but Sharif and Zardari differ over how fast to move.
The two vowed the PPP-led government would pass a resolution in parliament to bring back 60 judges within a month of the coalition taking office. The deadline passed on Wednesday, with Zardari in Dubai where he had gone to see his daughters.
The PPP harbors reservations about some judges, notably Iftikhar Chaudhry, the Supreme Court Chief Justice whose defiance of Musharraf last year galvanized the opposition.
Analysts say the PPP is cautious about restoring Chaudhry because last October he had admitted legal challenges to a pardon that Musharraf granted Bhutto and Zardari to allow them to return to Pakistan without fear of prosecution in a slew of graft cases they maintained were politically motivated.
The PPP wants to link reinstatement of the judiciary to a constitutional reform package that will include measures to shorten the tenure of senior judges.
Under such a formula, Chaudhry could be reinstated with honor and then immediately packed off to retirement.
The alliance between the PPP and PML-N marked the first time Pakistan's two mainstream parties have come together to assert civilian rule in a country that has been run by generals like Musharraf for more than half the 61 years since its formation.
Optimism over the political outlook after the February vote had helped the Karachi stock market hit a record high on April 21, but the index has since lost over three percent as investors registered worry over the deadlock on the judges.
(Additional reporting by Kamran Haider; Writing by Ralph Gowling; Editing by Philippa Fletcher)
(For a Reuters blog about Pakistan please see blogs.reuters.com/pakistan)
