As Pakistan Roils, Protesters Set to March on Capital
 

[FONT="Comic Sans MS"][SIZE="3"][COLOR="Black"][FONT="Comic Sans MS"][SIZE="3"][COLOR="Black"]By Pamela Constable
Washington Post
Sunday, March 15, 2009
RAIWIND, Pakistan, March 14 -- On Saturday morning, former prime minister Nawaz Sharif met with a group of Pakistani columnists at his country estate, where peacocks and deer roam the grounds. He told them he wished there were a way to reconcile with his nemesis President Asif Ali Zardari and prevent a clash between security forces and demonstrators heading for the capital, Islamabad, on Sunday.

"Please, tell us a way out of this," Sharif, 59, told the journalists, sounding a bit plaintive. "I am ready for reconciliation with Mr. Zardari, as long as he is also ready. But if he keeps on this same path, how can I work with him? After he has broken so many promises, who will guarantee him?"

By late evening, however, Sharif was back in his fiery pulpit, exhorting hundreds of supporters from the Pakistan Muslim League-N in nearby Lahore to come out on the streets and "fight this obsolete system" of government. "The winds of change are blowing, and nobody can stop them," he shouted to cheers. "Whoever tries to stop them will be destroyed."

Sharif's hardening stance came despite an olive branch offered late Saturday by Zardari, whose spokesman said the president would ask the Supreme Court to review its February decision banning Sharif and his brother Shahbaz Sharif from political office. It also came despite a phone call from Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, who reportedly asked Sharif and Zardari to settle their differences through negotiation.

As the political brinkmanship continued, police in the capital prepared to stop protesters from reaching the city Sunday, and the army remained on alert. Officials blocked highways with huge shipping containers, and flights were grounded.

But thousands of opposition supporters, egged on by Nawaz Sharif and a national lawyers' movement, continued streaming toward Lahore, the capital of Punjab province, where they rallied by torchlight in the darkened city and prepared to leave Sunday morning for their "long march" on the capital. They have vowed to demonstrate until Zardari restores a group of deposed senior judges.

Despite Zardari's late-night offer, analysts said the confrontation in this nation of 172 million appeared to have gone too far to be defused.

"Zardari has been singularly selfish, and Sharif is in too much of a hurry," said Najam Sethi, a newspaper editor in Lahore. "He wants a way out now, but he is caught on the horns of a dilemma. He has raised the stakes so high, and the distrust between the two leaders is so great, that he cannot back down. There is no solution that can take place in the next 48 hours."

Zardari, whose government is fighting Islamist insurgents and depends heavily on U.S. military and economic aid, is under strong pressure from the army and the United States to prevent a violent confrontation, which could destabilize the country. The government has responded with a sweeping crackdown against opponents.

Since Tuesday, police have arrested hundreds of opposition activists and placed others under house arrest. On Friday, officials temporarily blocked transmission of a major independent TV news channel, and Zardari's information minister resigned several hours later in apparent protest.

On Saturday night, the president said he would be open to discussing most issues with Sharif's Pakistan Muslim League-N. But Zardari excluded from negotiations the one issue that matters most to his opponents in the legal and civic communities: the restoration of Iftikhar Mohammed Chaudhry, the former chief justice of Pakistan. Chaudhry was fired two years ago by then-military ruler Pervez Musharraf and has gained celebrity status during the struggle to reinstate him.

Many Pakistanis say Zardari fears that Chaudhry would reopen old court cases against him and nullify many of his year-old government's actions. Analysts said Zardari's stand has also been strengthened by U.S. ambivalence about the former justice, an unpredictable maverick who has questioned the disappearance of terrorism suspects.

At the gathering in Raiwind, Sharif related a history of broken promises by the president and said he had reneged on a Charter of Democracy both men had signed to create a civilian government one year ago.

"We were trying to bring Pakistan out of a dictatorial regime. It was the first time in our history that the two major parties had gotten together. But Mr. Zardari kept backing out of his promises," Sharif told the journalists here. "I am not joining the long march to reach the presidency only to bring back the independent judiciary." But if Zardari "pushes us to the wall," he added, "we will not go home and be silent."

Aides to Sharif said he plans to join the march, in which caravans of vehicles will set out from a lawyers' association office in the Lahore High Court complex. But police are expected to stop the procession, as they have been blocking caravans from other cities all week, and Sharif could well be placed under house arrest. [/COLOR][/SIZE][/FONT][/COLOR][/SIZE][/FONT]