Pakistan's Sharif pulls party out of coalition

By Jerry Norton

ISLAMABAD (Reuters) - Former Pakistani prime minister Nawaz Sharif pulled his party out of the ruling coalition on Monday, deepening a political crisis that has diverted government attention from pressing security and economic problems.

The move came just a week after the coalition parties had celebrated the resignation of President Pervez Musharraf in the face of the coalition's threat to impeach him.

Sharif said the party of assassinated former prime minister Benazir Bhutto, which leads the coalition, had repeatedly broken promises on resolving a judicial dispute and on who should be the next president.

"We therefore feel that these repeated defaults and violations have forced us to withdraw our support from the ruling coalition and sit on the opposition benches," Sharif told a news conference.

The departure of his party is not expected to force a general election as Bhutto's Pakistan People's Party (PPP), now led by her widower Asif Ali Zardari, should be able to gather enough support to govern, analysts say.

Sharif also said he would not try to destabilize the government. "We'll play the role of a constructive opposition."

The coalition, formed after Musharraf's allies lost a February general election, had looked increasingly precarious since Musharraf resigned a week ago.

The PPP and Sharif's party were bitter rivals during the 1980s and 90s, when Bhutto and Sharif were both chosen twice as prime minister, but they found common ground more recently in their opposition to Musharraf.

His departure undermined the logic of their alliance.

Sharif had pulled his ministers out of the cabinet after an earlier deadline passed to restore judges Musharraf purged last year. He had repeatedly threatened to withdraw from the coalition and last week set Monday as his latest deadline.

The PPP is reluctant to restore the judges partly because of concern the deposed chief justice might take up challenges to an amnesty granted to Zardari and other party leaders from graft charges last year, analysts say.

Before Musharraf sacked them, the judges -- the former chief justice in particular -- were quite willing to challenge his government on the legality of various decisions, a tendency the PPP may not view with enthusiasm now that it governs.

CANDIDATE

Another divisive issue is who should be the nuclear-armed country's next president.

The PPP announced on Saturday that Zardari would be its candidate.