A senior US diplomat intervened Sunday to end the deadlock between governing coalition partners over the reinstatement of deposed judges that seriously threatens their month-old alliance.
US Assistant Secretary of State for South and Central Asian Affairs Richard Boucher Sunday met former premier Nawaz Sharif in London, where the alliance partners had been holding inconclusive talks on the course to be followed for the return of the judges, including chief justice Iftikhar Chaudhry.
The meeting between Boucher and Sharif took place at the request of Washington, and they discussed "Pakistan's political and security situation", TV channels cited Sharif's personal secretary Imran Khwaja as saying. "The coalition stands at a critical point and it's now up to the PPP to take a firm decision," a PML-N spokesman, Siddiqul Farooq, told Deutsche Presse-Agentur dpa on Sunday.
The State Department official landed in the British capital early this morning on his way home from a Bangladesh visit and went into talks with the PML-N leaders in an effort to end the stalemate.
Party sources said the meeting discussed the various aspects of the issue relating to the reinstatement of the sacked Supreme Court judges after the earlier rounds of talks between the ruling coalition partners had failed to break the impasse.
The sources said the America is keen to see amicable settlement of the judiciary issue in such a way that all the stakeholders are satisfied. Boucher is also meeting the PPP Co-Chairperson Asif Ali Zardari in his short stay in London.
The PML-N leaders are scheduled to leave for Pakistan later this evening.
Analysts say the proposed judicial reforms would undermine the authority of Chaudhry, who is the bone of contention for the PPP as he had admitted legal challenges to an amnesty for politicians granted by Musharraf last October that largely benefited Zardari in escaping graft and corruption cases.
The failure of the coalition partners to agree on restoring the judges could lead to the collapse of their government.
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