Pakistan's governing coalition collapses

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan — Former Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif pulled his party out of Pakistan's coalition government and joined the opposition Monday, a blow to chances for political stability in the nuclear-armed country.

The dramatic break came one week after Pervez Musharraf resigned the presidency under pressure and amid a growing Islamist insurgency, which threatens Pakistan's stability and that of neighboring Afghanistan.

Sharif's Pakistan Muslim League-N blamed Asif Ali Zardari's Pakistan People's Party (PPP) for failing to fulfill a pledge to reinstate the judges whom Musharraf fired last November.

The attempt to create a national unity government began after democratic elections in February in which no party won a majority. However, the coalition, under Zardari's leadership, was always fragile, held together in part by a commitment to ousting Musharraf. After Musharraf resigned to avoid impeachment, there was little to hold them together.

The coalition's collapse will be a setback for the Bush administration, which has urged Pakistan to tackle the Taliban- and al-Qaida-inspired militancy in the tribal border region, which is a base for the insurgency in Afghanistan.

The government won't fall for now, but the PPP will have to rely on the support of new partners, including a party that was close to Musharraf.

Sharif announced he'll back his own candidate for president, to challenge Zardari, the widower of former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto who declared over the weekend that he'll run for the post. Saeed-uz-Zaman Siddiqui, a Supreme Court judge who retired in 2002, will be Sharif's candidate.

At a news conference in Islamabad, Sharif brandished a signed agreement forged with Zardari earlier this month, which promised the restoration of the judges within 24 hours after ousting Musharraf. It was the third deadline the coalition had missed for the judges, a cause Sharif has embraced. The deal, Sharif said, included having a nonpartisan new president until the powers of the presidency are reduced.

"We therefore feel that these repeated defaults and violations have forced us to withdraw our support from the ruling coalition and sit on the opposition benches," Sharif said.

Zardari didn't dispute Sharif's account but pleaded for him to reconsider. Zardari admitted that the sticking point was reinstating deposed Chief Justice Iftikhar Chaudhry, an activist judge. He seemed determined not to restore Chaudhry.

As for the signed accord, Zardari said it was "only a political agreement ... not a part of the Quran."

The terrorist threat in Pakistan appears to be growing. Last week, Taliban rebels conducted two suicide-bomb attacks, on a hospital and an arms factory, that together claimed about 100 lives. Fighting this month between insurgents and the army in Bajur, near the Afghan border, has forced 300,000 residents to flee. They're living in the neighboring North West Frontier Province in squalid conditions.

On Monday, gunmen in the port city of Karachi set fire to two armored personnel carriers bound for U.S. forces in Afghanistan, while a rocket attack on the home of a provincial lawmaker in Swat, part of the North West Frontier Province, killed his brother, two nephews and five guards. The government banned Pakistan's Taliban movement, signaling hopes of negotiating with the rebels had evaporated.