FACTBOX: Leading figures in Pakistan's new government

(Reuters) - Pakistan's President Pervez Musharraf swore in ministers on Monday for a coalition government that could try to force his resignation.

Here are short profiles of leading members of the cabinet;

Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gilani

-- Gilani, 55, hails from a prominent family from southern Punjab and entered politics in the 1980s in support of the then military dictator, President Mohammad Zia-ul-Haq. He later joined Bhutto's Pakistan People's Party, and was Speaker of the National Assembly from 1993 to 1997.

-- After Musharraf came to power, Gilani spent nearly five years in jail before being released in 2006. He was accused of promoting people out of turn as assembly speaker, but was never convicted.

Finance Minister Ishaq Dar

-- Dar was finance minister in Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif's government at the time of the military coup that brought General Musharraf to power in 1999. Dar was jailed for two years.

-- An accountant by training, Dar, 60, was appointed commerce minister in 1997 and promoted to finance minister a year later. Both Sharif governments in the 1990s were regarded as pro-business, but it ended in tears with an economic crisis triggered by sanctions imposed after Pakistan conducted nuclear tests in 1998.

Foreign Minister Shah Mehmood Qureshi

-- The 52-year-old Qureshi is president of the Punjab chapter of Pakistan People's Party (PPP).

-- He belongs to a land-owning family, graduated from Britain's Cambridge University, and switched from Sharif's party to Bhutto's in the mid-1990s.

-- He has served as Finance Minister of Punjab, the richest and most populous of Pakistan's four provinces, in 1990-1993.

Defense Minister, Ahmed Mukhtar

-- A senior PPP leader, Mukhtar defeated president of the pro-Musharraf Pakistan Muslim League, Chaudhry Shujaat Hussain, in the February 18 polls.

-- An industrialist, Mukhtar served as commerce minister in Bhutto's second government in the mid-1990s.

Information Minister, Sherry Rehman