UPDATED ON:
Tuesday, March 20, 2007
09:38 Mecca time, 06:38 GMT
News CENTRAL/S. ASIA
More judges resign in Pakistan
Activists torch a poster of Musharraf during a demonstration [AFP] 
 
Seven Pakistani judges have resigned over government moves to sack the country's chief judge.
 
The move on Monday came as the leader of an opposition alliance of conservative religious parties called for more rallies to protest against the suspension of Chief Justice Iftikhar Chaudhry on March 9.
 
The affair outraged lawyers, the opposition and many Pakistanis, and presented Pervez Musharraf, the Pakistan president, with his biggest political crisis as elections loom.
 
Judicial officials said six judges had submitted their resignations in Sindh province and one in Punjab on Monday.

The move against Chaudhry has fuelled suspicion that Musharraf feared the independent-minded judge would block any move by the president to retain the role of army chief, which he is due to relinquish this year. Polls are due late this year or early next.

   

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Protesting lawyers and opposition activists clashed with police in the capital, Islamabad, and in Lahore last week.

   

There were no demonstrations in those cities on Monday, but lawyers across the country stopped work for an hour in a token protest and several hundred lawyers marched in Karachi. There was no trouble.

 

The leader of the opposition Muttahida Majlis-e-Amal alliance of religious parties called for a protest outside the Supreme Court in Islamabad on Wednesday when Chaudhry is due to appear before a panel of judges hearing accusations against him.

 

"It's a political issue, a political fight ... we have to intensify street protests," Qazi Hussain Ahmed, president of the six-party Muttahida Majlis-e-Amal alliance, told reporters.

   

The US, a major ally of Pakistan, has urged both sides to show restraint.

 Source: Agencies
 
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