Pakistani parliament hostile to Musharraf to meet

Pakistan's National Assembly was due to hold its inaugural session on Monday, setting the scene for a showdown with President Pervez Musharraf a month after his opponents swept a general election.

Musharraf's allies were routed in the February 18 vote, and he is faced with the prospect of inviting the victors, led by the Pakistan People's Party (PPP) of assassinated opposition leader Benazir Bhutto, to form a coalition that could drive him from power.

Pakistan's Western allies and neighbours fear a confrontation between the president and a new government will herald more upheavals in a nuclear-armed state reeling from a wave of militant bombings.

The members-elect will be sworn in by the old assembly's speaker. The sitting is then due to be adjourned until Wednesday when members elect a new speaker and his deputy.

Security was tight outside parliament with police and paramilitary soldiers guarding the complex and restricting traffic on the avenue outside.

The PPP emerged with the most seats in the 342-member National Assembly but not enough to rule alone.

The party of Nawaz Sharif, the prime minister whom then army chief Musharraf overthrew in a 1999 coup, came second, dealing a crushing defeat to the pro-Musharraf Pakistan Muslim League.

Sharif and Asif Ali Zardari, Bhutto's widower and political successor, signed an agreement this month to form a coalition with a small regional party.

Neither Zardari nor Sharif stood in the election but both leaders turned up at parliament to watch the proceedings.

"The Pakistani nation today has thwarted the attack conducted by Mr Musharraf on October 12, 1999," Sharif told reporters as he arrived, referring to Musharraf's coup.

The two main coalition party leaders have vowed to reinstate judges the president dismissed when he imposed a six-week stint of emergency rule in November.

If reinstated, the judges are expected to reopen legal challenges to Musharraf's re-election as president by legislators in October while he was still army chief. Musharraf's opponents say his re-election was unconstitutional.

WEARING BLACK

The new parliament may also try to amend the constitution to deprive Musharraf of his power to dismiss the government.

In the latest violence to rock the country, at least nine militants were killed on Sunday by missiles fired by a U.S. aircraft in the South Waziristan tribal region, a haven for al Qaeda and Taliban fighters on the Afghan border.

The attack came a day after a Turkish woman and 11 people, including four U.S. FBI agents, were wounded in a bomb attack on a restaurant popular with foreigners in Islamabad.

Bhutto's party said its members would wear black arm bands to mourn Bhutto, killed in a gun and bomb attack in the city of Rawalpindi on December 27.

The party has yet to decide on its candidate for the post of prime minister.

Makhdoom Amin Fahim, a senior aide to Bhutto and Zardari's deputy, had been widely seen as the front-runner but his prospects dimmed after Sharif's party objected to his contacts with Musharraf.

There have been growing calls from within the PPP for Zardari to take up the job, but for now he is not eligible as he is not a National Assembly member.

"Consultations are over on the issue of prime ministership. Mr Asif Zardari will announce the name very soon," Farzana Raja, a PPP spokeswoman, told reporters outside parliament.