The New Nation - Internet Edition

Agency, Islambad

Pakistan's former Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif has agreed to let parliament debate how to reinstate judges sacked by former President Pervez Musharraf.

He had threatened to pull out of the coalition government unless it was agreed on Friday that all the sacked judges be restored.

Parliament will debate the issue next week. Pakistan's biggest party, the PPP, opposes Sharif on the issue.

They fear it could result in PPP leader Asif Zardari facing prosecution.

If former Supreme Court judges, including ex-Chief Justice Iftikhar Chaudhry, are reinstated, they could overturn a controversial amnesty that Musharraf granted Zardari and his wife Benazir Bhutto last year that paved the way for them to return to the country.

Sharif pulled back from his threat to withdraw his PML-N party from the governing coalition after talks with other coalition parties in Islamabad.

The coalition parties will draw up a draft resolution over the weekend which will be introduced in parliament on Monday.

But Sharif is still hoping the resolution will result in Chaudhry and the other judges getting their jobs back.

"Wednesday should be the day for reinstatement of judges," he told journalists.

The other main disagreement within the coalition is over who should succeed Musharraf, following his resignation on Monday.

Most members of the biggest party in the coalition, the Pakistan People's Party (PPP), want to nominate Zardari as president. He took over as PPP leader after Ms Bhutto was assassinated in December.

The president is chosen by the two chambers of the national parliament and the country's four provincial elections. The election will be held on 6 September.

But Sharif, who leads the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N), prefers what he calls a consensus president.

The coalition was elected in February but analysts say it has failed to find solutions to Pakistan's economic crisis and to the militants in its north-western tribal regions bordering Afghanistan.

The BBC's Charles Haviland in Islamabad says the politicians' squabbling is hindering any possible plan for tackling militant violence.

The Pakistani Taleban claimed responsibility for Thursday's suicide bombings on an ordnance factory in the town of Wah, near the capital Islamabad. It was the deadliest attack on a military site in Pakistan's history. The militant group promised more attacks in Pakistan's major urban conurbations unless the army withdrew from the tribal areas.

On Tuesday, 32 people were killed in a suicide attack on a hospital in the northern town of Dera Ismail Khan.

Musharraf, a key ally of President George Bush's "war on terror", stepped down this week after nine years in power to avoid being impeached.

He sacked about 60 Supreme Court judges during a state of emergency in November to prevent them from overturning his re-election as president.

Analysts say that although the PPP and PML-N worked together to hound Musharraf from office, there is a history of intense rivalry and mistrust between the two main parties.

The parties differ over the future of Musharraf, who has been replaced by a caretaker president, the speaker of the Senate.

Zardari's party has said it believes Musharraf may have immunity from prosecution.

But Sharif's party argues he should stand trial for, among other things, abrogating the constitution.