Pakistan party quits Cabinet over judges

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan — Pakistan's fragile governing coalition cracked open Monday as one of its major parties withdrew from the Cabinet, less than three months after elections that had united rival factions opposed to President Pervez Musharraf.

The move leaves the nuclear-armed Muslim state, a key ally in Washington's battle against al-Qaida and the Taliban, with a conflict between its two big political parties.

Previous faceoffs resulted in military interventions and a 1999 coup that brought Musharraf to power.

Nawaz Sharif, leader of the Pakistan Muslim League-N, said his party would leave all federal posts after talks broke down with the Pakistan People's Party over how to restore the former chief justice and 60 judges fired in November by Musharraf, Pakistan's military ruler at the time.

Sharif, a former prime minister, said his party would remain in Parliament and had no desire to damage the government.

Looking exhausted after days of negotiations, he said his decision was a "bitter pill, but we had to do it ... we do not want to destabilize the democratic process."

Analysts saw the split as a significant blow to Pakistan's progress toward mature democratic rule and a deep disappointment to the public, which ousted Musharraf's party at the polls in February and had demanded the restoration of the judges during months of unprecedented civic protests.

Analysts also said the judicial dispute — and by extension, the question of Musharraf's future — would likely drag on, distracting the new government from addressing more important problems, especially battling radical Islamist fighters and rebuilding the badly ailing economy.

"This is a huge setback for the government," said Shuja Nawaz, a Pakistani security analyst in Washington. He noted Sharif's pullout may give Musharraf a chance to reassert his political strength.

"This crisis will distract attention from critical issues, and the real losers will be the people of Pakistan."

For the past month, Pakistanis watched with sinking hopes while Sharif and his arch-rival, Pakistan People's Party leader Asif Ali Zardari, held three rounds of negotiations over the judicial dispute.

Sharif set Monday as a final deadline for Zardari to agree on a plan to restore the dismissed judges and bring the matter to Parliament.

But Zardari, who took his post after the December assassination of his wife, former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto, has been more ambivalent about the judges. He has said the courts had failed to help him when he spent a decade in jail on unproven corruption charges.

A final round of talks between the two in London broke off with no agreement over the weekend, even after the top U.S. regional diplomat met there separately with both men and privately urged them to reconcile.

Sharif, overthrown by Musharraf in 1999, insisted on a plan to bring back the ousted judges and demote those who took oath under his rule. Zardari, who benefited politically and legally from Musharraf's court purge, insisted the president's appointed judges keep their full powers.

The People's Party may have to take new groups into the coalition to maintain its parliamentary majority. Its only choices would be parties allied with Musharraf, a move that wouldn't sit well with Zardari's constituents.

Public opinion has tended to blame Zardari for being intransigent. Sharif, despite the potential damage from his Cabinet pullout, is widely seen as having taken the moral high ground on an issue that became a first major test for Pakistan's new government.

"This is a defining moment for Pakistan," said Ehsan Iqbal, one of nine Cabinet members from the Muslim League who will leave his post today. "Without the rule of law, without an independent judiciary, the country cannot move ahead democratically or constitutionally."

Information from McClatchy newspapers is included in this report.