Lahore: Police stopped US Ambassador Anne Patterson yesterday from meeting Aitzaz Ahsan, a leading opposition figure being held under house arrest, a US embassy spokeswoman said.
Ahsan, a lawyer and former member of the National Assembly for Benazir Bhutto's Pakistan Peoples Party, was detained under emergency powers invoked by President Pervez Musharraf on November 3.
The former cabinet minister was held at Adiala Jail in Rawalpindi for nearly three weeks before being transferred to house arrest in the eastern city of Lahore and allowed to file nomination papers for a parliamentary election set for January 8.
Patterson had requested permission days earlier to meet Ahsan, president of the Supreme Court Bar Association.
When the envoy arrived at Ahsan's home she was barred from seeing him, but was allowed to meet his wife, Bushra, along with several lawyers in another part of the house.
"The ambassador met Bushra Aitzaz to express concern and repeated US calls for all detainees to be released, including Aitzaz Ahsan," Elizabeth Colton, the embassy spokeswoman, said.
The government says it has released more than 5,000 detainees in the last two weeks.
A small number of judges and lawyers, whose interpretation of the law posed the most serious challenge to Musharraf's authority, remain either under house arrest or in prison.
Earlier yesterday in Lahore, Patterson met Nawaz Sharif, the prime minister Musharraf deposed in 1999.
During the meeting with Sharif, Patterson called on candidates to "fully participate in the elections", according to a statement issued by the embassy. Sharif had been trying to organise an opposition boycott of the vote.
Soon after the meeting, the Election Commission barred Sharif from contesting because he has a criminal record, though the ex-premier says the cases against him were politically motivated.
Patterson has also urged Pakistan to end a clampdown on sections of the media.
"The US government has said it is strongly supportive of lifting of any remaining curbs on the media and freeing all remaining detainees," Patterson told journalists.
The United States wants Musharraf to revoke emergency rule, which he has said he will do on December 16, restore the constitution, release prisoners held under the emergency, and to hold free and fair elections.
It has not called on Musharraf to restore the judiciary.
Some 60 judges were dismissed after they refused to go along with Musharraf taking emergency powers and suspending the constitution.
