The New Nation - Internet Edition

Reuters, Lahore

A convoy of Pakistani lawyers set off on Thursday on the last leg of a cross-country rally, vowing to lay siege to parliament unless judges fired by President Pervez Musharraf last year get their jobs back.

Lawyers have been at the forefront of opposition to staunch U.S. ally Musharraf since he tried to dismiss the then Supreme Court chief justice Iftikhar Chaudhry in March last year.

Chaudhry and dozens of other judges were purged when former army chief Musharraf declared emergency rule in November.

"If the judges are not restored t we will lay siege to parliament," a leader of the lawyers' movement, Ali Ahmed Kurd, told a rally of several thousand lawyers and political activists in the city of Lahore.

The protest, called a "long march" even though the lawyers are traveling in a fleet of about 200 vehicles, set off from the southeastern city of Multan on Wednesday. They are due to reach the capital Islamabad on Friday.

The protest is increasing pressure on Musharraf to step down. Isolated since his allies were trounced in a February election, opponents are demanding he quit and face trial.

It is also a challenge to the two-month-old coalition government led by the party of slain former prime minister Benazir Bhutto and a threat to its tenuous unity.

The coalition has been almost completely preoccupied with the question of the judges and the related issue of Musharraf's fate despite a looming economic crisis and militant threat.

Analysts say if Chaudhry were reinstated, he would be expected to take up legal challenges to Musharraf's presidency that could lead to his ouster.

But Chaudhry might also review an amnesty that wiped out corruption cases against Bhutto, her husband Asif Ali Zardari, who has led her party since she was assassinated in December, and other party politicians.