Pakistan police clash with protesting lawyers

LAHORE, Pakistan (AP) — Violent clashes broke out Thursday in the eastern Pakistan city of Lahore between police and lawyers protesting against the rule of President Pervez Musharraf.

Demonstrators threw bricks, glasses and sticks at police who blocked the path of about 400 lawyers as they tried to march from one court complex to another, according to an Associated Press reporter at the scene.

Some police officers picked up the missiles and threw them back at the lawyers, and used batons to beat several demonstrators who clambered over a gate onto the road.

Four lawyers and three policemen were injured, said Zahid Abbas, a police official, who was bleeding from a wound to his hand caused by a flying stone. At least two lawyers were detained.

Riot police wearing helmets and carrying shields eventually retreated far enough to let the protesters onto the street in front of the district court, but surrounded them on three sides.

The lawyers chanted slogans including "Go, Musharraf, go!" and "Friends of Musharraf are traitors!" and tore down election posters for a prominent Musharraf ally.

Lawyers and judges have been at the forefront of protests against Musharraf because of his campaign against Pakistan's Supreme Court.

Musharraf purged the court after declaring a state of emergency on Nov. 3, just as it prepared to rule on the legality of his victory in an October presidential election.

The court, re-staffed with loyal justices, last week approved his re-election. Musharraf was sworn for a new five-year mandate Thursday, a day after retiring from his dual role as army chief.

Copyright 2007 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

Musharraf to Give up Army Post This Week

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan -- There's word that Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf will take the oath of office for his next term Thursday as a civilian. An army spokesman says the general will step down as the head of Pakistan's military the day before he's sworn in as president.Removing Musharraf from the army post has been a key demand of his domestic and international critics. He has come under fire since implementing emergency rule in Pakistan earlier this month. Also today, former Pakistan Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif registered as a candidate for Pakistan's crucial January parliamentary elections. He returned to the country yesterday after spending eight years in exile.Sharif is threatening to boycott the election unless Musharraf reinstates independent Supreme Court judges. He says he will not lead any government under Musharraf even if he does take part in the vote. Musharraf ousted Sharif in a 1999 military coup.

© 2007 The Associated Press. All rights reserved

A Comical View on the Saga going on in Pakistan

In times like these when you are disheartened, a comic strip about the situation prevailing in Pakistan to cheer you up

Pakistan's Imran Khan on hunger strike - AP

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan — Roll Michael Jordan and Babe Ruth into one, throw in an Oxford education and a beautiful British aristocrat as an ex-wife and you get an idea of how big Imran Khan was as captain of Pakistan's world champion cricket team in 1992.

He's rarely made news as a politician — a rival once called him a sports hero and a political zero. But Khan was back in the spotlight Monday, beginning a hunger strike at the prison where he is being held for protesting against Pakistan's military ruler.

The hunger strike is the latest twist for Khan, a one-time playboy cricket star who retired from sports 15 years ago to become a crusading politician and devout defender of his Muslim faith.

Khan, 54, has never been able to translate his achievements in the gentlemanly game of cricket into success in the often dirty world of Pakistani politics.

But he is among the country's most recognizable personalities — when President Gen. Pervez Musharraf declared emergency rule, Khan was among the first of his political opponents targeted for arrest.

Khan eluded police for about a week, and was picked up and jailed after going to a pro-democracy protest.

On Monday, he decided to stop eating or drinking until judges that were fired when Musharraf imposed the emergency are reinstated, said his former wife, Jemima Khan. The two have remained close since their 2004 divorce.

"He plans to keep it up until the judiciary is restored. He could get very thin," she told The Associated Press in an e-mail from London, where she lives with their two young sons.

Prison officials denied Khan was on a hunger strike, saying he just wanted media attention.

Noted for his good looks and charm, Khan was not shy about his Western ways during his days at Oxford University and as a world-class cricket player. He drank alcohol, dated society women and eventually married Jemima, a British heiress of Jewish heritage.

By the late 1990s, a more devoutly religious Khan emerged onto Pakistan's often corrupt and chaotic political scene. He swore off alcohol and presented himself as just the man to clean up politics.

At first supportive of Musharraf, who took power in a 1999 coup, Khan soon broke with the military ruler and forged ties with Islamic fundamentalists.

In the 2002 elections, Khan even supported a pro-Taliban cleric, Maulana Fazlur Rehman, for prime minister. The cleric is now leading hundreds of Islamic militants battling government forces northwest of Islamabad.

Khan was among the first politicians in the Muslim world to speak out about a Newsweek report that a copy of the Quran had been thrown into a toilet at the U.S. military lockup for alleged terror suspects at Guantanamo Bay. The story was later retracted, but not before violent protests broke out.

In 2006, authorities briefly put Khan under house arrest to stop him from organizing protests when President Bush visited Pakistan.

Musharraf-Nawaz encounter on cards as meeting with Benazir speculated - The News

ISLAMABAD: As rumours of a Benazir Bhutto-General Musharraf meeting in Karachi continued to haunt the media throughout Sunday, there were credible reports that a meeting between the General and Mian Nawaz Sharif in Riyadh was also on the cards when General Musharraf would visit the Kingdom, with the Saudis playing the mediators.

Though all top aides of Benazir, including Rehman Malik, Sherry Rehman and others denied any meeting, one important media high-up of the outgoing cabinet said if any meeting was to be held, it would have been on Saturday night and not on Sunday.

The Musharraf-Benazir meeting speculation grew as the US Deputy Secretary of State John Negroponte pushed hard for their patch-up during his visit and even in his carefully-calculated remarks advised both not to show brinksmanship and not to resort to confrontation, something which was probably aimed more at the PPP leader than General Musharraf.

But the speculation was fuelled by the arrival of General Musharraf in Karachi after his short visit to Quetta on Sunday and the unexpected dash of Benazir Bhutto to Bilawal House in Clifton when everybody was expecting that she would be heading to Islamabad for a possible face-to-face meeting with Negroponte.

In Islamabad, a high-level official said the back-channel interactions between the interlocutors of the presidential camp and former prime minister Benazir Bhutto were very much alive and the two sides were in touch with each other off and on.

The official, however, maintained that no meeting between the president and Benazir was on the cards. The official did not rule out further contacts with the other side soon and hoped that the former prime minister, who was over-influenced by the Western media, especially the US, would act in a more realistic manner in the wake of her conversation with the US Deputy Secretary of State John Negroponte.

“It would certainly help her in gauging the position of the US administration. I hope Benazir Bhutto would try to come out of the hype she fell into in the last few days.” The official explained that the president was visiting the provincial capitals of Lahore, Karachi and Quetta to meet the provincial legislatures on the eve of completion of their term and thanking them for their support to him.

The Nawaz-Musharraf meeting under the supervision of the Saudis was a more plausible prospect though all PML-N leaders were positive that their leader would never agree to see the general, no matter what.

But even if the Saudi hosts of Nawaz Sharif pressed him to sit with the general, PML-N leaders were asserting on Sunday that the only thing they could talk about was how and when Musharraf would quit and whether he would restore the ousted judiciary, revive the Constitution and put Pakistan back on the democratic rails.

Sources close to Nawaz Sharif claimed on Sunday that no meeting was scheduled so far but if there would be some meeting on the insistence of Saudi authorities, the only agenda of the meeting would be to devise a strategy for Musharraf’s unconditional exit from power.

The chances that such a meeting could take place looked more possible because Nawaz Sharif himself had stated minutes before Geo TV went off the air that he had refused to see General Musharraf in Saudi Arabia twice.

It is known that General Musharraf was supposed to visit the kingdom some days ago but the visit was cancelled at the last moment. His expected visit to Riyadh or Jeddah in a couple of days is also part of the same strategy, basically being pushed by the Saudi royal family to bring them together and try to make them live and let live.

Sources in the Pakistani High Commission in London told The News on Saturday night that the Saudi authorities had pointed to the concerned Pakistani authorities towards the possibility of such a meeting reportedly on Tuesday.

These sources claimed that the meeting, if held, would be meant to reach some compromise between the two leaders with the help of the highest Saudi authorities. PML-N leaders in Pakistan insist that such a secret meeting will be a death knell for the PML-N reputation in Pakistan and that Nawaz would never agree to sit with Musharraf.

One source said the Saudi authorities delayed permission to Nawaz to leave their country because they wanted that he should first meet Musharraf on Saudi soil. The source claimed that if Nawaz agreed to sit with Musharraf for a one-on-one meeting on the insistence of his respectable hosts, he would insist that the meeting be “on-the-record” and not secret.

“Nawaz will only ask Musharraf to restore the independent judiciary, lift curbs on the media and quit immediately to save the country from further turmoil,” the source said. Sources close to Nawaz Sharif say he was under pressure for the last two months to agree to a meeting with the top general wherever and whenever he wanted. They said that Nawaz was asked to sit with Musharraf many times through different means, including three times directly from the highest Saudi royal authorities and twice through their messengers.

However, the sources claimed that Nawaz was not ready to do so only for the reason that such an act will be against the aspirations of people of Pakistan as they only want one thing now and that is to get rid of the dictatorship at any cost.

Sources in the Pakistani High Commission in London also claimed that not only Nawaz was being pressurized to sit with Musharraf to have some compromise but the Sharif family in London was also being continuously contacted by the close relatives of the General Musharraf’s top aide for such a compromise if they wanted to go to Pakistan. The sources claimed that the last such contact was made on Friday, November 16.

Ahsan Iqbal, secretary information PML-N, when approached by The News, said that according to his information there was no possibility of such a meeting in Saudi Arabia. He said that everyone knew that emergency would be lifted after a few days as the only purpose to impose it was to get rid of the independent judiciary, a major obstacle in the unconstitutional moves of the rulers.

He said the only demand of the PML-N now was the restoration of judiciary because once the independent judges were restored, all other issues would be settled automatically. The emergency will be lifted, Provisional Constitution Order (PCO) will be revoked, the media will become free and the Constitution will be restored in one stroke.

He claimed that Musharraf did not want all these things to happen which had now become the basic demand of the nation. When presidential quarters were contacted by The News, they said Musharraf-Nawaz meeting was not being planned at the initiative of the president. They said the PML-N leadership was more than willing for such a meeting.

Stone Age Pakistan by Javed Chaudary