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ISLAMABAD, Sunday (AFP)

Pakistan's military regime is trying to broker a coalition involving its major opposition party in a deal that could break a month-long impasse over a new government, political sources said.

Sources said the regime had called for an alliance between the pro-government Pakistan Muslim League-Quaid (PML-Q) and the anti-regime party of former premier Benazir Bhutto, the Pakistan People's Party (PPP).

Although the government has kept silent, official sources say an offer has been extended to the PPP leadership under which Bhutto's jailed husband, Asif Ali Zardari, would be freed in return for agreeing to a coalition.

And according to a PPP legislator, many of the party's 81 members elected to the National Assembly are in favour of abandoning pre-election acrimony and uniting with the PML-Q, which won 103 seats in the polls.

"A sizeable number of the PPP's MNAs (members of the National Assembly) want to be in the government," PPP legislator-elect Makhdoom Faisal Saleh Hayat told AFP.

"There is no harm in sitting in the government. I have warned Benazir Bhutto that if we do not follow this line, there will be division in the party."

Zardari, in an interview with AFP Friday, acknowledged there were ongoing negotiations between the PPP and Musharraf's regime, but denied his release from jail - where he has been held since 1996 on corruption and criminal charges - was being used as a bargaining chip.

"I will have nowhere to go if I strike any clandestine deal with the powers-that-be and I don't want to put myself in a situation where whatever I have sacrificed in the past six years goes to waste," he said.

Privately officials from both sides have said a deal was in the offing, and Zardari confirmed that PPP parliamentary leader Makhdoom Amin Fahim was discussing a power-sharing arrangement with the government.

"There is definitely a dialogue between Fahim and powers-that-be but no deal. The word deal is coined by establishment to undermine politicians," he said.

In a surprise move late Friday, the government granted permission to Zardari to travel to the southern port city of Karachi to stay with his ailing mother in hospital. The move immediately fuelled speculation that a deal was about to materialise.

But PPP secretary-general and hardliner Raza Rabbani dismissed the importance of Zarbari's move to Karachi and insisted no "backdoor" deal was in the offing.

"It's purely a visit to see his mother and comfort her in her critical health condition. Nothing more or nothing less that should be read into that, he told AFP Saturday.

"The PPP has already made it clear we are not entering into backdoor deal with the regime or anyone else."

Meanwhile the pro-Taliban leader of Pakistan's religious right insisted he should be the country's next prime minister, further complicating protracted efforts to form a new civilian government.

Fazal-ur-Rehman, prime ministerial candidate of the Muttahida Majlis-e-Amal alliance of hardline Islamic parties, also said he hoped the anti-military Pakistan People's Party (PPP) of former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto would support his bid.

"MMA has nominated its man for the prime ministerial office and there is no question of backing out on it," he told reporters after meeting Nawabzada Nasrullah Khan, head of the Alliance for the Restoration of Democracy (ARD) that includes the PPP.

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