Pressure on Zardari, Nawaz to work with Musharraf

Detained Pakistani lawyer Aitzaz Ahsan (C), who led deposed chief justice Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry's legal fight against his suspension by President Pervez Musharraf, is greeted by lawyers as he arrives for casting his vote in the High Court's annual election in Lahore yesterday.Photo: AFP

Western envoys in Islamabad continued on Friday what seemed to be hectic contacts with the leaders of parties that won last Monday's elections amid mounting worries about President Pervez Musharraf's political future.
The president has come under renewed pressures after the elections threw up all opponents of his iron-fisted rule for more than eight years and crushed the main party of his loyalists.
The meetings, mainly of American and British ambassadors with the leaders of the Pakistan People's Party (PPP) and Pakistan Muslim League-N (PML-N), have led to speculations about possible counsels to the makers of the future government to try to co-exist with Musharraf despite years of their mutual hostility.
No details have been available of the talks, except that matters about transition to democracy and counter-terrorism were among subjects discussed, indicating the West's concerns about the future of Pakistan's key role in the so-called war on terrorism of which the president is the architect.
US ambassador Anne W. Paterson on Friday had a second contact with PPP co-chairman Asif Ali Zardari within a few days, though this time accompanied by a Congressional delegation that earlier met President Musharraf.
British High Commissioner Robert Brinkley held a second meeting with Sharif, only a day after the PML-N leader reiterated his hard line against the man who toppled him as prime minister in the Oct 12, 1999 coup, by telling a news conference that “sooner he (president) left the better”.
Washington's known preference for a power-sharing between Musharraf and the PPP had led to the return of PPP leader Benazir Bhutto to Pakistan after about nine years of self-imposed foreign exile.
But any deal cut then was overtaken by Ms Bhutto's Dec 27 assassination in a gun-and-bomb attack after she addressed a campaign rally in Rawalpindi and the rout of the previously ruling and pro-Musharraf Pakistan Muslim League in the elections, which left the two main winning parties the most sensible course of power-sharing between themselves rather than with those who will remain virtual political untouchables for now.