Zardari blinks,allows Sharif’s long march as protests rock Pak

Opposition leader and former prime minister Nawaz Sharif has thrown his weight behind the lawyers,putting him into open confrontation with Zardari.

Infuriated by a Supreme Court ruling barring him and his brother from elected office,and by Zardari ejecting his party from power in Punjab province,Sharif has called the protest “a defining moment” for Pakistan. Stoking tension,a spokesman for Sharif said the government had hatched a plot to kill him. Zardari’s spokesman dismissed that as political gimmickry and said the Sharif brothers had been promised full security.

As the so-called long march got under way,coalition partner Asfandyar Wali Khan,whose Awami National Party heads a government in the North West Frontier province,said Zardari had agreed to two opposition demands,without giving details. The comments raised hopes for reconciliation a day after police detained hundreds of political activists.

In another sign of possible compromise,Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gilani,after meeting with army chief General Ashfaq Kayani,said that the government wanted central rule in Punjab to end.

If the crisis gets out of hand,the army,which has ruled for more than half the country’s 61 years of history,could feel compelled to intervene,though analysts have little expectation that Pakistan would revert to military rule so soon.

In Karachi,the capital of Sindh province,paramilitary soldiers and police ringed the High Court where lawyers were assembling,stopping their cars and buses from approaching. Instead,several hundred lawyers streamed out of the building on foot,where they joined political activists outside.

“We’ve started the march to achieve our goal,” Munir A Malik,a former president of the Supreme Court bar association and a protest organiser,told Reuters.

Earlier,about 100 members of the Islamist Jamaat-e-Islami party allied with the lawyers scuffled with police who stopped them entering the High Court,a witness said. Police later lashed out with batons to disperse the crowd. Lawyers were also gathering in Quetta,capital of Baluchistan province,a witness said.

The protesters hope to converge on Islamabad on Monday to demand the reinstatement of former Supreme Court chief justice Iftikhar Chaudhry who was dismissed by former president Pervez Musharraf in 2007.

Protesters plan a sit-in near parliament,although the government,which came to power after elections last year after nine years of military rule,has said they will not be allowed in the city centre.

Zardari has refused to reinstate Chaudhry. Analysts say he fears the judge could nullify an amnesty Musharraf granted Zardari and his late wife Benazir Bhutto. US and British diplomats have been meeting all sides in recent days in an effort to avert violence and chaos and US envoy to the region Richard Holbrooke telephoned Gilani,his office said.