Coalition rift widens over Punjab governor

Islamabad: The rift in Pakistan's coalition government widened on Friday after the appointment of a disputed figure to a key post in the administration drew protests from ex-premier Nawaz Sharif.

Sharif pulled his party's ministers from the Cabinet earlier this week after the government failed to meet a pledge to restore judges ousted under President Pervez Musharraf.

Asif Ali Zardari, who leads the largest party in the coalition, hopes to persuade Sharif to return soon and stabilise an administration facing huge economic problems as well as pressure from the West to curb Islamist militancy.

Difficult relations

But a spokesman for Sharif said yesterday that the appointment of the new governor of Punjab province had only embittered relations between the two erstwhile partners.

"We should have been taken into confidence before the decision on the governorship", spokesman Sadiqul Farooq said.

"If further steps are taken unilaterally like this, then of course the coalition gets weaker."

The new governor of Punjab is Salman Taseer, a longtime member of Zardari's Pakistan Peoples party who is also a business and media tycoon.

Taseer was allegedly arrested during Sharif's first government in the early 1990s after publishing details of alleged corruption in the administration.

The government took office six weeks ago on a platform of strong opposition to former army strongman Musharraf, whose political allies were routed in February elections.

But its failure to agree on how to restore Supreme Court judges purged by Musharraf in November to halt legal challenges to his continuing in office has cast the country into political uncertainty.

Sharif appears to view the judges as a tool to assail Musharraf, who ousted his government in a 1999 coup.

Zardari, whose assassinated wife Benazir Bhutto fought bitterly for power with Sharif in the 1990s, has been more cautious.

He insists that laws must be changed to allow the judges to return and has shied away from openly confronting Musharraf, who retains the power to dissolve parliament.