Sharif set to decide fate of Pakistani coalition

By Kamran Haider

ISLAMABAD (Reuters) - Former Pakistani prime minister Nawaz Sharif is set to decide on Monday if his party will stay in the coalition government after it failed to break a deadlock with its main partner over the reinstatement of deposed judges.

Sharif made the restoration of 60 judges sacked by President Pervez Musharraf in November the main condition for joining the coalition led by the party of Asif Ali Zardari, the widower and political successor of the late Benazir Bhutto.

Three days of talks in London between Sharif and Zardari, whose Pakistan People's Party (PPP) leads the coalition, ended on Sunday without any breakthrough.

There is speculation that nine ministers from Sharif's Pakistan Muslim League (Nawaz) (PML-N) could quit the cabinet.

The PML-N could maintain support for the coalition without being part of Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gilani's government.

There had been high hopes that the alliance between the two main political forces would assert civilian rule in a country that has been led by generals, like Musharraf, for more than half the time since it was founded in 1947.

"God willing, we will not allow the government to be destablised. We will never allow dictatorship or anti-democratic forces to take advantage of the situation and operate freely," Sharif's aide Khawaja Mohammad Asif told reporters at Islamabad's airport, after returning with his leader from London.

Food Minister Nisar Ali Khan, a Sharif loyalist, assured Prime Minister Gilani on Monday that the PML-N would back the government whatever course of action it decided to take over the judges' issue, the prime minister's office said in a statement.