Date:01/05/2008 URL: http://www.thehindu.com/2008/05/01/stories/2008050160261400.htm

International

Sharif-Zardari talks appear to make headway

Atul Aneja

Coalition government not in danger of collapse, they say

DUBAI: Talks between the former Pakistan Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif and the co-chairman of the Pakistan People’s Party Asif Ali Zardari over the reinstatement of judges appear to have made headway.

At the end of two rounds of marathon talks on Wednesday evening, Chaudhry Nisar Ali Khan, Federal Communication Minister who belongs to the Pakistan Muslim League (N), said substantial progress had been made in the talks. He said talks would continue on Thursday afternoon on a few sensitive issues which still needed to be addressed. The PML (N) delegation, led by Mr. Sharif, was earlier scheduled to depart for Pakistan on Wednesday night.

Both Mr. Sharif and Mr. Zardari earlier assured the media after the first round of talks on Wednesday afternoon that the coalition government was not in danger of collapse. “The coalition is strong,” Mr. Zardari told reporters outside the venue of talks. Neither of the two leaders referred to the 30-day deadline for the reinstatement of sacked judges that the PML (N) and the PPP had set under the Murree accord.

Mr. Zardari has been insisting that the judges’ reinstatement is part of a wider issue of judicial reforms in Pakistan. He has, therefore, advocated working out a constitutional package to be passed by Parliament as the basis of a lasting solution. According to him, persisting with a 30-day deadline, which expired on April 30, for the restoration of the judges is unrealistic.

The talks in Dubai have taken place in the backdrop of a majority view emerging in Pakistan that the country’s Supreme Court needed expansion. The Pakistani daily Dawn reported that the government had finalised a draft resolution, which stated that the strength of the Supreme Court would be increased. Not only would the dismissed judges be reinstated, the new ones who had taken oath under the Provisional Constitutional Order would also be not removed. Mr. Zardari, Mr. Sharif, Awami National Party president Asfandyar Wali and Maulana Fazlur Rehman would formally announce the agreed resolution, the daily said.