Pakistan Opposition Leader Is Held Before Protest

LAHORE, Pakistan — Police detained the opposition leader, Nawaz Sharif, at his house in Lahore early Sunday morning hours before his address to a planned demonstration here, and arrested supporters protesting outside his home.



Mr. Sharif’s brother, Shahbaz, was also detained in Rawilpindi, the city adjacent to the capital, Islamabad, according to Pakistani television. The detentions of the brothers occurred at dawn, as security forces stepped up a crackdown to prevent a national protest by the lawyers’ movement and the Sharif brothers’ supporters that is aimed at converging on the capital by Monday.

The police shut down the center of Lahore at dawn, placing tractor-trailers across the roads near the high court, the starting point of the protests. More than a dozen prominent leaders of the opposition party, Pakistan Muslim League-N, had been detained in the early morning, the home secretary Rao Iftikhar Ahmed, said.

The police also placed a leader of the lawyers’ movement, Aitzaz Ahsan, under house arrest, Reuters reported.

Lawyers and leaders of the Muslim League and Jamaat-e-Islaami, a right-wing religious party involved in the protest who stayed overnight in the high court building were trapped inside, Mr. Ahmed said.

Shahid Siddiqi, a former justice speaking from inside the high court said, “it would be impossible for the long march to get underway because roads coming into to the center of the city were blocked three miles out.”

At 9 a.m., the announced starting time for the march, the center of Lahore was empty except for police vehicles and officers.

Appeals by the United States to President Asif Ali Zardari and to Nawaz Sharif to cool the political crisis, which many Pakistanis fear could result in bloodshed during the protest, appear to have been rebuffed as both sides geared up for a showdown on the streets.

In a last-minute move to mollify the opposition, Mr. Zardari’s spokesman said Saturday night that the government would seek a review of a Supreme Court decision last month that disqualified Mr. Sharif and Shahbaz Sharif from holding elective office. But Mr. Sharif has said that such a gesture would be insufficient to head off the protests.

Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton called Mr. Zardari and Nawaz Sharif on Saturday evening to discuss the situation before the announcement was made, spokesmen for the two men said. Although Mr. Zardari’s gesture came after she called, it seemed not enough to deter Mr. Sharif.

Mr. Zardari also said in a statement by his spokesman that the government would review how Supreme Court judges, fired two years by President Pervez Musharraf could be restored. This would be done, he said, in accordance with a document signed three years ago by Mr. Sharif, and former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto, he said.

Mr. Zardari, in imposing a crackdown that some Pakistani newspapers said was akin to that of a military government, was confident that he would weather the demonstrations and the challenge from Mr. Sharif, associates of the president said. He would emerge with a firm grip on the provincial legislature in Punjab, control of which is one of the main points of dispute between him and Mr. Sharif, said Sheikh Mansour, a senior official of Mr. Zardari’s party.

The current battle between Mr. Zardari and Mr. Sharif, a former prime minister, erupted on Feb. 25 when the president imposed executive rule on the Punjab Legislature, the stronghold of Mr. Sharif’s party, the Pakistan Muslim League-N.

Hours earlier, the Supreme Court had issued its ruling disqualifying the Sharifs from holding office. To consolidate their opposition to Mr. Zardari, the brothers joined forces with the lawyers’ movement, which had called for a national protest and sit-in in Islamabad on March 16.

The lawyers are campaigning for the reinstatement of a former chief justice of the Supreme Court, Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry, who was fired two years ago by Mr. Musharraf. Nawaz Sharif has long supported that cause.

The United States’ special envoy to Pakistan, Richard C. Holbrooke, has telephoned Mr. Zardari and Nawaz Sharif in recent days to encourage reconciliation. The American ambassador to Pakistan, Anne W. Patterson, met again with the president and the prime minister, Yousaf Raza Gilani, on Friday.

But Mr. Zardari would not consider a compromise and was confident that his Pakistan Peoples Party would be able to form a new provincial government next week, Mr. Mansour said.

Even though Mr. Zardari’s party has far fewer seats than the Pakistan Muslim League-N in the legislature, it would be able to do this by joining forces with another party, the Pakistan Muslim League-Q, and defectors from Nawaz Sharif’s party, Mr. Mansour said.

Mr. Mansour accused the Sharif brothers of using the protests to bring down the central government. “This is not a political procession,” he said. “It is an attack.”

But as Mr. Zardari, the widower of former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto, stood firm, senior members of his party began to desert him. The minister of information, Sherry Rehman, resigned late Friday night after a prominent television news channel, Geo, was banned by the government in some parts of the country. The channel is viewed as broadcasting news reports in favor of Mr. Sharif. Another senior official, Raza Rabbani, who was the party leader in the Senate, resigned from the cabinet after Mr. Zardari bypassed Mr. Rabbani and chose a more junior lawmaker, Farooq H. Naik, for the most senior post in the Senate chamber.

Source: NewYorks Times