Sharif threatens to quit Pakistan coalition -Report

US: Former Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif has threatened to pull his party out of Pakistan’s ruling coalition it it does not decide by Friday to reinstate judges purged by former president Pervez Musharraf, the Wall Street Journal reported.

The deadlock over the judges opened up cracks in the coalition led by slain Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto’s Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) soon after Musharraf, faced with the threat of impeachment, resigned on Monday.

Sharif told the newspaper that the sacking of the judges last year had shaken the foundations of the country and it was necessary to restore them to their jobs.

“We will not try to bring the government down,” Sharif said in remarks published on Thursday. “But of course we then have no choice but to sit in the opposition.”

The PPP led by Bhutto’s widower Asif Ali Zardari, has wavered over restoring the judges, partly because of concern the deposed chief justice might take up challenges to an amnesty from graft charges granted to party leaders last year, analysts say.

Leaders of two small parties in the four-party alliance have played down the dispute but said they had been given three days to resolve the problem between the big parties.

Singapore, Thursday, Reuters