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Islamabad: The leaders of the two biggest parties in Pakistan's new coalition government will try in the coming week to resolve their differences over how to reinstate senior judges whom the president dismissed, a party spokesman said on Saturday.
The parties of slain former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto and another ex-premier, Nawaz Sharif, have promised to restore dozens of Supreme and High Court judges fired by President Pervez Musharraf during a state of emergency in November. The Supreme Court had been about to rule on the legality of Musharraf's October win in a presidential election.
The four-party coalition formed after the February 18 parliamentary election has yet to work out how to reinstate the judges, however, raising questions about how united it is and whether it can curtail the clout of the US-allied president.
Sharif's party insists the judges, including Supreme Court Chief Justice Iftikhar Mohammed Chaudhry, can be restored simply by issuing an executive order. Bhutto's party says the matter is not that simple and wants a major overhaul of the judiciary.
Sharif and Asif Ali Zardari, Bhutto's widower, will meet within days to try to resolve their differences, according to Sadiq ul-Farooq, a spokesman for Sharif's party. Zardari took over the leadership of his wife's party after her December 27 assassination.
"There cannot be any retreat from the solemn pledge made by us" on the restoration of the judges, ul-Farooq said. "People voted for us because we had promised to undo all the dictatorial steps taken by Musharraf."
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