Pakistan's Zardari faces growing turmoil - rival

By Kamran Haider and Robert Birsel

NAROWAL, Pakistan (Reuters) - Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari will see growing turmoil unless he takes steps to bolster democracy as opposition coalesces around a demand for an independent judiciary, his main rival said on Monday.

Nuclear-armed Pakistan is embroiled in a political crisis less than six months after former army chief Pervez Musharraf was forced to resign as president by a civilian government that came to power in March last year.

Zardari, widower of assassinated former prime minister Benazir Bhutto, whose party leads a ruling coalition, is locked in a battle with former prime minister Nawaz Sharif.

Sharif's supporters have been protesting daily since last week when the Supreme Court barred Sharif and his brother from standing for election, and Zardari imposed central rule over Punjab province, dismissing its government led by Sharif's party.

Countrywide protests loom this month with Sharif's party and others backing a campaign organised by a lawyers' movement for the independence of the judiciary.

"If the situation is not arrested here, I see it getting worse," Sharif told Reuters in an interview as he drove through flat farm land to address a rally by thousands of supporters in the Punjab town of Narowal.

"His personal agenda comes into clash with Pakistan's agenda and with our agenda which is to restore democracy, restore the independence of the judiciary ... establish the rule of law."

Ostensibly, Zardari and Sharif, who head the country's two biggest political parties, disagree over the judiciary but at the heart of their feud is a struggle for power.