Kulsoom Nawaz under house arrest

Islamabad, July 9. (DPA): Pakistani police today continued its guard around the Lahore residence of the deposed Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, confining his wife to the house and frustrating her rally against the military regime, witnesses said.

Police continued their blockade of roads leading up to the Sharif residence in Lahore's posh Model Town district. Sharif's wife Kulsoom Nawaz has been inside her house since her nine-hour stand-off with authorities yesterday.

"No one was being allowed to go in or come out of the building," a journalist who viewed the situation in Model Town early today told DPA on the phone from Lahore. (Reuters photo shows police arresting supporters of Nawaz Sharif in Rawalpindi on Sunday.)

He believed Kulsoom was effectively under house detention. He said the police had confirmed not to allow the lady to go ahead with her march.

Kulsoom Nawaz had given a call to Sharif's Pakistan Muslim League (PML) activists to rally with her yesterday from Lahore, capital of Pakistan's central Punjab province, to the northwestern provincial capital of Peshawar.

Kulsoom said she wanted to collect funds for drought-hit people in Pakistan's south and western areas, and had no political plans.

But police and administration officials said they had orders to break her march since a ban imposed by the military Government was in place on such political activities.

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