Pakistan Rivals Join to Fight Musharraf

By JANE PERLEZ

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan — The leaders of the two major political parties, in an unexpectedly strong show of unity against President Pervez Musharraf, agreed Sunday that they would reinstate judges fired by the president and would seek to strip him of crucial powers.

The power sharing deal, announced by Asif Ali Zardari, the leader of the largest party, the Pakistan Peoples Party, and Nawaz Sharif, the head of the Pakistan Muslim League-N, represented another tough challenge to the already waning authority of Mr. Musharraf, a favorite ally of the Bush administration.

The two men, appearing at a news conference together in the resort area of Bhurban, said they would seek to remove the president’s power to dissolve the Pakistani Parliament and his power to appoint the chiefs of the military services. Together, the two parties control just shy of two-thirds of the Parliament after an election last month in which Mr. Musharraf’s party was routed.

The agreement settled key differences that had clouded the post-election atmosphere.

Mr. Zardari, the widower of the slain party leader, Benazir Bhutto, had appeared to waver on Mr. Sharif’s insistence that the judges be reinstated.

For his part, Mr. Sharif had indicated that members of his party would not sit in the cabinet while Mr. Musharraf remained in power.

But on Sunday, Mr. Sharif, reading in English a “summit declaration” said: “The coalition partners are ready to form the governments and the national and provincial assemblies should be convened immediately.”

Mr. Sharif, who was twice prime minister in the 1990s, said his party would participate in a cabinet that would be dominated by Mr. Zardari’s choices. He appeared to swallow the idea that his cabinet members would have to take the oath of office from President Musharraf, an act that Mr. Sharif had said he would oppose.

Mr. Sharif was overthrown in October 1999 in a bloodless military coup by Mr. Musharraf, who was then an army general, and he holds a particular enmity against the president, who he says should resign. Mr. Musharraf stepped down as the head of the army in December.

One of the biggest threats to Mr. Musharraf’s dwindling authority was Sunday’s agreement on restoring the justices, whose dismissal Nov. 3 under an emergency order spawned an energetic anti-Musharraf lawyers movement.

In the last few days, the lawyers had started to mobilize again on behalf of Chief Justice Mohamed Iftikhar Chaudhry and other judges, who have remained under house arrest for the last four months after their dismissals.

After Sunday’s joint announcement, a lawyer who is active in the movement, Athar Minallah, said he was now confident the justices, including Mr. Chaudhry, would be reinstated. “I don’t see any hurdle in the restoration of the judges now,” Mr. Minallah said. “It’s a positive day for democracy in this country.”

The reinstatement of the dismissed judges of the Supreme Court and four High Courts in the provinces represents a special danger to Mr. Musharraf because they would likely be presented with petitions seeking to overturn the president’s re-election in October, lawyers said.

The lawyers movement, led by Aitzaz Ahsan, has argued that Mr. Musharraf’s re-election by the national and provincial assemblies while he held the post of army chief was unconstitutional.

A senior lawyer in Mr. Sharif’s party, Ashtar Ausaf Ali, said Sunday that he had readied a draft of the resolution that Mr. Sharif and Mr. Zardari said Sunday would be passed by a simple majority within 30 days of the opening of Parliament.

The draft resolution has been approved by senior members of both parties, Mr. Ali said. It refers to the firing of the judges and says in part that it “resolves to undo all illegal and unconstitutional and immoral acts of the usurper and calls upon the chief executive to take all necessary measures for redeeming the honor of the judges and reversing extra constitutional measures.”

The “usurper,” Mr. Ali said, was a reference to Mr. Musharraf.

The other efforts to weaken Mr. Musharraf’s authority were contained the “Charter for Democracy,” a document that Mr. Sharif signed with Ms. Bhutto when the two were in exile several years ago.

The charter is aimed at bringing Pakistan back to a parliamentary system of government that was initially conceived when the country was founded 60 years ago. Under the eight years of Mr. Musharraf’s military rule, the power of the presidency has grown at the expense of Parliament.

In particular, Mr. Musharraf secured a constitutional amendment in 2002 that gave him the right to dissolve Parliament. The Charter of Democracy that the two leaders endorsed Sunday calls for that presidential prerogative to be abolished.

But in order to reverse the 2002 amendment, the Parliament needs to pass a new constitutional amendment, and that requires a two-thirds majority, Mr. Minallah said.

At the moment, the two major coalition partners appear to be 10 votes short of that majority. The strength of Sunday’s accord was likely to attract independents and smaller parties to the anti-Musharraf cause in the parliament, Mr. Minallah said.

The 2002 constitutional amendment under which Mr. Musharraf won the right as president to appoint the chiefs of the military services would also be overturned, Mr. Ali said. The right to appoint the army chiefs would be handed back to the prime minister.

One question that remained unsettled Sunday was the choice of prime minister.

As the leader of the party with the most seats in Parliament, Mr. Zardari would choose the prime minister from his party, Mr. Sharif said.

The names of several prominent politicians belonging to the Pakistan Peoples Party and holding parliamentary seats in the powerful Punjab province have been floated in recent days as possible nominees.

They include Ahmed Mukhtar, a commerce minister in the second government of Ms. Bhutto, and the head of the Servis Group, an industrial conglomerate based in Punjab Province.