Re: Lahore is Jewel of World
LAHORE, Pakistan – Pakistan opposition leader Nawaz Sharif defied house arrest Sunday to lead an anti-government convoy toward the barricaded capital and a showdown with its pro-Western president.
Earlier, Sharif's supporters fought running battles with riot police in the eastern city of Lahore, a taste of what could come if authorities make good on pledges not to allow him and other anti-government protesters to enter Islamabad.
The power struggle between President Asif Ali Zardari and former Prime Minister Sharif threatens to paralyze the one-year-old government and, alarmingly for the U.S., distract the nuclear-armed country from its fight against Taliban and al-Qaida militants operating along the Afghan border.
"People have responded very overwhelmingly to the call of the hour, and I am thankful to the nation," Sharif told Geo television by phone from his car. "This is a prelude to a revolution."
A prolonged crisis could lead to early elections or force Zardari to resign, particularly if the powerful military decides to intervene. Sharif and Islamist parties would be well-placed to profit from any early elections given popular discontent with Zardari's party.
Zardari's spokesman said late Sunday the president had no intention of resigning, while the information minister repeated earlier offers of negotiations to end the standoff.
"We want to get the nation rid of this situation at the earliest, this state of instability and uncertainty," Information Minister Qamar Zaman said.
Earlier Sunday, hundreds of police surrounded Sharif's residence in Lahore, carrying an order for his house arrest, party spokesman Pervaiz Rasheed said. But Sharif, who denounced the order as illegal, later left the house in a convoy of vehicles and headed into town.
Riot police had earlier fought running battles with stone-throwing protesters, turning the downtown into a battle zone littered with rocks and clouded with tear gas and smoke. A mob smashed windows of buses parked along the route of Sharif's convoy.
But by evening the mood turned festive as police pulled back, and thousands of flag-waving supporters and black-suited lawyers turned out to cheer Sharif, a local favorite.
It was unclear why the police, who were heavily outnumbered, apparently disobeyed orders and allowed Sharif to travel.
The gathering in Lahore was the biggest yet in the buildup to plans for a mass sit-in in front of Parliament in the capital on Monday.
The government, led by Zardari's party, has refused permission for the indefinite sit-in, arguing that it would paralyze the administration and present a target for terrorists. It has put the army on alert in case the unrest gets out of hand.
Though Sharif, his politician brother and scores of other opposition party members were initially ordered held under house arrest, Sharif was allowed to leave his residence unchallenged.
Rao Iftikhar, a senior government official, said authorities had reached an "understanding" with Sharif that he would address the rally and return home.
But Sharif said his destination was Islamabad, and his long, slow-moving convoy wended its way out of Lahore toward the capital, 180 miles (300 kilometers) to the northwest.
Asif Kirmani, Sharif's spokesman, said supporters used cranes to remove shipping containers that authorities had placed across the road, and the opposition leader would drive all night to Rawalpindi, just south of the capital.
Some of the first demonstrators to pick their way past the barricades in Lahore pelted riot police ringing the area with rocks. Police responded with tear gas, and beat several protesters with batons.
Associated Press reporters saw several injured police officers being helped away. A handful of protesters were detained and bundled into police vans.
Later, the crowd swelled to several thousand. Many were lawyers campaigning for an independent judiciary, but most appeared to be Sharif supporters chanting "Here comes the lion!" in a reference to his party symbol, and "Go Zardari go!"
The political turmoil began last month when the Supreme Court disqualified the Sharif brothers from elected office because of convictions dating back to an earlier chapter in Pakistan's turbulent political history.
Zardari compounded the crisis by dismissing the Sharifs' administration in Punjab, Pakistan's biggest and richest province, of which Lahore is the capital. The brothers then threw their support behind the plans by lawyers to stage the sit-in.
On Saturday, after U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton spoke to both Zardari and Nawaz Sharif by telephone, the government announced it would appeal the Supreme Court ruling in the coming days.
Zardari refuses to reinstate a group of independent-minded judges fired by his predecessor, former military ruler Pervez Musharraf.
Many observers suspect Zardari fears the judges could challenge a pact that quashed long-standing corruption charges against him and his wife, slain former leader Benazir Bhutto.
Washington worries that the crisis will further destabilize the shaky one-year-old government and prevent it from being an effective ally in the fight against insurgents in neighboring Afghanistan.
Early Sunday, suspected militants attacked a transport terminal in northwestern Pakistan used to supply NATO troops in Afghanistan and torched dozens of containers and military vehicles, police said.
Associated Press writers Zarar Khan, Asif Shahzad and Stephen Graham in Islamabad contributed to this report.
