Pakistan reinstates sacked chief justice

Pakistan pledged Monday to restore its deposed top judge and end a crackdown on activists, caving in under mass protests to try to defuse a crisis that took the nation to the brink of chaos.

Main opposition leader Nawaz Sharif welcomed what he called a historic achievement and promptly called off a mass protest march that had been due to descend on the capital Monday, calming widespread fears of unrest.

Earlier Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani's climbdown, in a dawn address to the nation, had followed overnight talks with President Asif Ali Zardari and army chief Ashfaq Kayani to prevent chaos in Pakistan, the central front in the fight against extremism.

"I announce today that Iftikhar Chaudhry and all other deposed judges will be reinstated from March 21," when the current chief justice retires, Gilani said.

Zardari has come under massive Western pressure to defuse a standoff withSharif, who urged the masses to rise up against the government to demand that judges sacked under emergency rule be reinstated.

"It is a historic day, a great day which will change the country's destiny," said Sharif from inside his car in the central city of Gujranwala, were he was showered with rose petals and mobbed by jubilant supporters.

"We are now calling off this long march," he said, following discussions with lawyers and political allies, including cricket hero Imran Khan.

Gilani also overturned a repressive government clampdown designed to foil the protest march, ordering authorities to release all those arrested and declaring the immediate lifting of a ban on public demonstrations.

"I want to congratulate the nation. Let us celebrate this with dignity," Gilani said in a plea for peaceful celebrations, one day after protests saw the worst street violence since the crisis unfolded nearly three weeks ago.

On Sunday Sharif defied house arrest to lead thousands in a banned protest through Lahore, where demonstrators dismantled barricades and fought pitched street battles with riot police who fired tear gas.

To further ease tension, Gilani earlier said the government had decided to file a petition against the February 25 supreme court ruling that banned Sharif and his brother Shahbaz Sharif from contesting elections.

The United States welcomed Gilani's announcement as a "substantial step towards national reconciliation" in a statement issued by its embassy in Islamabad.

Later Monday, Chaudhry emerged from his home to appear in public for the first time since the announcement, beaming and waving at crowds of supporters after two years of frustration, although he did not speak publicly.

The former chief justice was dismissed by Pervez Musharraf on November 3, 2007 along with 60 other judges, 53 of whom have since been reinstated.

The former military ruler feared the judges would declare him ineligible to contest a presidential election while in military uniform. He first fired Chaudhry in March 2007, but the judge was reinstated on a supreme court appeal.

Chaudhry's dismissal led to a countrywide protest that ultimately forced Musharraf to quit in August 2008, and his full reinstatement was a significant concession from a government that has reneged on previous pledges to do so.

Yet fears remain that the stand-off may further destabilise the nuclear-armed state. Analysts warned that the decision to bring back the judges had pushed an already weak Zardari deeper into the pocket of the influential army, which has ruled Pakistan for more than half of its 62 years.

Much of the violence has been concentrated in northwest Pakistan, where the army has been bogged down fighting Taliban hardliners and Al-Qaeda extremists, who fled there after the 2001 US-led invasion of neighbouring Afghanistan.





Conservatory & Botanical Gardens. AP Photo/Las Vegas News Bureau, Brian Jones

Prices, review, pictures

Prices, review, pictures

Listings provided by Cars.com