The New Nation - Internet Edition

AFP, Islamabad

The widower of Pakistan's assassinated former premier Benazir Bhutto was Saturday considering whether to run for president, but the country's ruling coalition remained riven by squabbles.

Asif Ali Zardari on Friday won the unanimous backing of lawmakers from the Pakistan People's Party (PPP), but has yet to announce if he will stand in the September 6 poll that will choose a successor to Pervez Musharraf.

Musharraf's resignation on Monday and the race to replace him come amid a prolonged battle with Islamic militants who have carried out suicide bombings and fighting on the Afghan border of nuclear-armed Pakistan.

The fragile coalition government comprising the PPP, now led by Zardari, and the party of another former prime minister, Nawaz Sharif, is at loggerheads over how to reinstate dozens of judges sacked by Musharraf last year.

Political instability and a nosediving economy have alarmed Western nations looking for continuity after the departure of Musharraf, a key US ally, but talks between the PPP and Sharif's party have so far failed to make headway.

Zardari is seen as a frontrunner for the presidency despite having previously denied any ambitions for the post made vacant when Musharraf stepped down in the face of looming impeachment charges.

"Zardari thanked Pakistan People's Party of which he is the co-chairman and said he will announce his decision within the next 24 hours," Information Minister Sherry Rehman said Friday, announcing the PPP's backing for Zardari.

There was no indication when Zardari might announce his intentions.

The fate of the 60 judges, including the chief justice, has become a political sticking point with crucial repercussions for the coalition.

Sharif has asked the PPP to tell him if the judges can get their jobs back on Monday, having previously threatened to quit the coalition if they were not reinstated by Friday.

The former premier-who was ousted by Musharraf in a 1999 coup-had said representatives of the two parties would draft a resolution on restoring the judges over the weekend and then introduce it in parliament on Monday.

A resolution on the reinstatement of the judges would require the PPP's support, but the party has shown no sign yet of keeping a pledge made in May to put them back on the bench.

Meanwhile, Sharif said Saturday after a meeting with PPP stalwarts in the eastern city of Lahore that he would back Zardari's presidential bid if he does away with the presidential power to dissolve parliament, created by Musharraf.

In restive northwest Pakistan, the military said troops had killed up to 35 militants in an offensive in the troubled Swat valley after a suicide attack on a police station killed seven people, including three policemen.

A double Taliban suicide bombing at Pakistan's biggest weapons factory on Thursday, the deadliest ever attack on a Pakistani military site, has put fresh pressure on the coalition to end its bickering and focus on militant violence.

Critics have suggested that Zardari is against the return of crusading chief justice Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry because he could overturn an amnesty on corruption charges that allowed Bhutto and Zardari to return to Pakistan.

Bhutto was killed in a suicide attack at an election campaign rally in December and the parties in the current ruling coalition defeated Musharraf's allies in polls held in February.