No deal over Pakistan judges

PAKISTAN: Pakistan’s ruling coalition has not reached an agreement to reinstate judges fired by US-backed President Pervez Musharraf, a party official said Sunday, ahead of a looming deadline.

Two-time ex-premier Nawaz Sharif, after talks with his coalition partner Asif Ali Zardari earlier this month in Dubai, had previously announced the judges would be restored on Monday.

Zardari, who is the widower of slain ex-premier Benazir Bhutto and now co-chairs her Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP), again met Sharif in London this week to resolve the issue, which threatens their fragile alliance.

Sharif’s PML-N party spokesman put the blame for the deadlock on Zardari’s party.“The ball is in the court of PPP. We have tried our level best... but so far no achievement has been made,” Sharif’s party spokesman Siddiqul Farooq told AFP about the latest rounds of negotiations in London.

“Of course we do not support a judiciary which is subservient to the executive,” Farooq said, adding that Sharif would return to Islamabad on Monday morning.

Farooq, when asked if Musharraf was ready to accept reinstatement of all judges except the deposed chief justice, said that his party would not agree to a “pick and choose” solution to the issue.

Musharraf imposed emergency rule and ousted chief justice Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry and dozens of other judges in November last year when it appeared they might overturn his re-election as president the previous month.

Farooq declined to say whether his party would quit the coalition, which came to power after Bhutto and Sharif trounced Musharraf’s allies in February general elections.

“There is no session of the national assembly tomorrow,” he said when asked if the May 12 deadline would pass without reinstatement of judges.

Islamabad, Monday, AFP