LAHORE, Pakistan — Lawyers vowed yesterday to stage massive street protests next month unless the new government meets its pledge to reinstate judges purged by President Pervez Musharraf.
The threat from the lawyers, whose protests helped undermine Mr. Musharraf’s grip on power last year, raises the stakes in Pakistan’s protracted power struggle.
Mr. Musharraf, a stalwart U.S. ally, imposed emergency rule and cleared out the Supreme Court in November to halt legal challenges to his re-election.
A new government composed of some of his fiercest opponents took office six weeks ago after elections and promised to reinstate the justices, casting doubt on Mr. Musharraf’s political survival.
But it has missed two self-imposed deadlines to do so, and the coalition appears to be unraveling over the issue — a process that could accelerate in the face of protests.
Yesterday, the lawyers’ leaders announced they would mount a “long march” in support of the judges on June 10. Senior lawyer Hamid Khan said the lawyers would likely converge in front of the Parliament building in the capital, Islamabad.
The government said the lawyers were entitled to peacefully express dissent.
“We are not a totalitarian government. We will neither stop them, nor block coverage if they march,” Information Minister Sherry Rehman said.
But the lawyers’ decision raises the likelihood of more instability in Pakistan.
The biggest party in the coalition, led by Asif Ali Zardari, insists it wants to restore the judges and turn its attention to other matters, including trimming Mr. Musharraf’s powers. But Mr. Zardari disagrees with his main coalition partner, former Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, over how to do it.
Mr. Sharif last week pulled his ministers from the Cabinet to protest the delay and said his party would support any lawyers’ protests.
Mr. Zardari, the widower of slain ex-Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto, wants to retain judges installed by Mr. Musharraf after the purge and follow the restoration of the old judges with a raft of time-consuming reforms to prevent legal challenges to the move.
But Mr. Sharif insists that since the ouster of the judges was illegal, they can be restored with a simple order from the prime minister.
In a separate development, Pakistan’s ambassador to Afghanistan returned home yesterday three months after he was kidnapped on the main highway through Pakistan’s border region.
The release of Tariq Azizuddin came as the government seeks to negotiate peace deals to curb Islamic militancy along the Afghan border — an approach viewed with apprehension in the West.
However, senior Pakistani official Rehman Malik said the envoy was freed Friday through a “law enforcement action” and the government had made no concessions in return.
Mr. Azizuddin vanished Feb. 11 along with his driver and bodyguard as they drove from the city of Peshawar toward the Afghan border. Some officials have suggested he was snatched by a criminal gang seeking ransom. But in a video aired April 19 on an Arab TV channel, Mr. Azizuddin said Taliban militants had abducted them.
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