2 Pakistani opposition parties vow to form coalition

The two main opposition parties in Pakistan announced on Thursday that they would work together to form a coalition government.

The apparent breakthrough came as the leaders of the two parties, the victors in parliamentary elections on Monday, held make-or-break talks in Islamabad.

"We will work together to form the government," former Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif said at a news conference in Islamabad, the capital, after the talks with Asif Ali Zardari, the widower of Benazir Bhutto, news agencies reported.

"We intend to stay together and be together in the Parliament," Zardari said at the joint news conference, The Associated Press reported. "We intend to strengthen Pakistan together."

The party leaders said they had agreed in principle to the restoration of the judiciary that had been swept away by President Pervez Musharraf under emergency rule last November, but they did not immediately say whether they would push for the removal of Musharraf, the AP reported.

Both the future of Musharraf and the restoration of the judges had been issues that had divided the two parties in their coalition negotiations.

Some analysts had expected that instead of working with Sharif, Zardari, who leads the party with the largest number of seats in the new Parliament, would reach out to the remnants of Musharraf's party, the Pakistan Muslim League-Q.

Since the election Monday, Sharif, the leader of the Pakistan Muslim League-N, which came in second to Zardari's Pakistan People's Party, has been adamant about trying to bring impeachment proceedings against Musharraf, who removed Sharif from power in a 1999 coup.

Sharif also argued for the immediate reinstatement of the judiciary, in particular the former chief justice of the Supreme Court, Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry, who has been under house arrest for three months.

To show his solidarity with Chaudhry, Sharif joined a noisy demonstration Thursday outside the judge's Islamabad home.

Sharif, speaking through a bullhorn to cheers, said that he would make sure in the next few days that the chief justice and dozens of other judges "illegally" fired by Musharraf would be restored to the bench. Sharif then asked the protesters to disband.

Later, Chaudhry spoke from his home by mobile phone to lawyers gathering in Karachi and Lahore, calling for the reinstatement of the judges, the AP reported.

Zardari has taken a somewhat softer line on the restoration of the judiciary, saying it should be a matter for the new Parliament.

Several days after Bhutto was assassinated in December, Zardari lashed out at Musharraf's party, accusing it of masterminding her death. But since the election on Monday, Zardari has taken a less hostile approach. By Wednesday he had dropped his harsh references to Musharraf and his defeated party.

As the maneuvering between the political parties has intensified in the last several days, the perception has grown among Pakistanis that the Bush administration would much prefer Zardari to join forces with the followers of Musharraf than with Sharif's.

The U.S. ambassador to Pakistan, Anne Patterson, met with Zardari on Wednesday at the American Embassy, an encounter that bolstered the belief among Pakistanis that Washington was in the thick of the political negotiations.

Statements from the White House and the State Department encouraging a broad consensus in a new government also added to the sense that the Bush administration was eager to try to preserve some power for Musharraf, an ally in the war on terrorism.

Dana Perino, the chief White House spokeswoman, confirmed Thursday that President George W. Bush had taken time during a tour of African states to telephone Musharraf on Tuesday after his party's losses in the elections.

Put Perino would not say what the two leaders had discussed. She said it was up to the Pakistani people to decide whether Musharraf retained his position.

Some Pakistanis warned Thursday that the United States must stand back. The leader of the opposition lawyers' movement in Pakistan, Aitzaz Ahsan, who has been under house arrest for more than three months but is now able to speak by telephone, said he had told a American diplomat on Wednesday, "The guy is history, please don't prop him up."

He said he had emphasized the fact that Musharraf's party had won only a small fraction of the 272 parliamentary seats to the diplomat, Bryan Hunt, the U.S. consul general in Lahore.

Ahsan has become a folk hero among the lawyers who opposed Musharraf' during his battle with the Supreme Court chief justice and the judiciary in general. His strong stand for the reinstatement of judges appeared to have contributed to the surprisingly strong showing in the elections for Sharif.

Ahsan argued that, in terms of Washington's priority in Pakistan - the campaign against terror - the restoration of the judiciary and the end of Musharraf's presidency were essential. Weapons of war were not the primary ingredient for success against the Taliban and Al Qaeda, he said.

"The only effective weapon is an empowered people with enforceable rights, and you can't have those rights without an independent judiciary," he said.

Ahsan is a senior member of the Pakistan People's Party, although he had a prickly relationship with Bhutto, who appeared to resent his independent streak.

One of Pakistan's most sought-after lawyers, Ahsan defended Zardari and Bhutto in court when they faced corruption charges after her first term as prime minister, and won acquittals for the couple in 18 cases between 1990 and 1993, he said.

Zardari currently faces corruption charges in Switzerland. He said in an interview last week that corruption cases against him in Pakistan were still pending.

Jane Perlez contributed reporting from Islamabad.