Bhutto's party wants coalition minus Musharraf allies

ISLAMABAD (Reuters) - The party of assassinated former prime minister Benazir Bhutto will try to form a coalition government without the pro-Musharraf Pakistan Muslim League (PML), Bhutto's widower Asif Ali Zardari said on Tuesday.

The Pakistan People's Party (PPP) won the most seats in the National Assembly in a national election on Monday, while President Pervez Musharraf's friends in the PML trailed a distant third.

"For now, the decision of the party is that we are not interested in any of those people who are part and parcel of the last government," Zardari told a news conference in Islamabad, adding the PPP would try to persuade the party of Nawaz Sharif, the prime minister whom Musharraf overthrew in 1999, to join the PPP in power.