PAKISTAN:LEADERS OF Pakistan's month-old ruling alliance meeting in Dubai yesterday narrowed differences over reinstating judges deposed by President Pervez Musharraf, calming fears that the coalition was about to break up.
"The meeting has made progress in a very positive way. We are now satisfied," former prime minister Nawaz Sharif said after holding a second day of emergency talks with Asif Ali Zardari, widower of Benazir Bhutto.
The parties of Mr Sharif and Mr Zardari defeated President Pervez Musharraf's allies in a parliamentary poll in February and formed a government.
But they have been at loggerheads over an unfulfilled promise to bring back the judges Mr Musharraf ousted when he imposed emergency rule last November.
Mr Sharif and Mr Zardari, whose PPP heads the four-party coalition, had pledged their government would pass a resolution to bring the judges back within a month of being sworn in.
That self-imposed deadline passed on Wednesday, but speaking after intense consultations with Mr Zardari in Dubai, Mr Sharif said the resolution would be passed, regardless of the delay.
Information minister Sherry Rehman, a senior PPP leader, also expressed confidence in the outcome of the talks in Dubai.
The PPP-led government of the prime minister Yousaf Raza Gilani needs stability to address the challenge of Islamist militancy and daunting economic problems.
Western allies in the war on terror dread nuclear-armed Pakistan sliding into a prolonged period of political instability.
Mr Sharif, the prime minister Mr Musharraf overthrew in 1999, wants the judges brought back as a first step to driving his usurper out of the presidency.
The restored judges could revive challenges to the legitimacy of Mr Musharraf's re-election last October by an outgoing parliament while still army chief.
Mr Zardari, however, is trying to avoid an early confrontation with Mr Musharraf, who retired from the army in November.
The PPP wants to link reinstatement of the judiciary to a constitutional reform package that will include measures to shorten the tenure of senior judges.
The constitutional reforms are also expected to strip Mr Musharraf of presidential powers to dismiss the government.
The PPP leadership harbours doubts about some judges, notably Iftikhar Chaudhry, the supreme court chief justice whose defiance of Mr Musharraf galvanised the opposition last year.
Mr Chaudhry irked the PPP last October by allowing legal challenges to a pardon Mr Musharraf granted Ms Bhutto and Mr Zardari to let them return to Pakistan without fear of prosecution in a slew of graft cases they always said were politically motivated.