Challenge likely to Musharraf's reelection plan

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan -- Fresh fighting erupted between the military and militants in Pakistan's tribal areas yesterday, as opposition political parties announced plans to file legal challenges to General Pervez Musharraf's apparent plans to be reelected as president while continuing to hold the office of military chief.

Musharraf, who seized power in a 1999 coup, suffered a potentially grievous setback last Friday, when the nation's highest court overturned his suspension of the Supreme Court chief justice, Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry.

After a March 9 presidential order to resign, Chaudhry challenged his suspension in court. His ouster prompted an unprecedented outpouring of demonstrations in favor of democracy and judicial independence.

The Supreme Court is expected to consider two main legal thorns that Musharraf would be likely to encounter if he seeks reelection later this year: whether he can continue as both army chief and president and whether he can be elected by the current Parliament.

Leaders of a coalition of opposition parties said they would meet today to discuss the timing of the constitutional challenges. They renewed their call for Musharraf to resign. "After the Supreme Court verdict, it is his democratic, moral, and ethical duty to resign," Ahsan Iqbal, the information secretary of Pakistan Muslim League, said in an interview last night.

He said the leader of the party, former prime minister Nawaz Sharif, also planned to appeal to the Supreme Court for his return to the country. Sharif was overthrown and exiled by Musharraf.

Meanwhile, in the tribal areas near the border with Afghanistan, the government's efforts to resuscitate a peace deal with Islamist insurgents bore no fruit, as clashes with the military in North Waziristan left what the Associated Press reported to be a death toll of 19.

Violence in the tribal areas has spiked since a military raid on a radical pro-Taliban mosque here in the capital. The Taliban announced last weekend that it had pulled out of a 10-month-old peace deal. A spate of suicide bombings and guerrilla attacks followed. All told, in less than three weeks, when the siege on the Red Mosque compound began, nearly 300 people have been killed.

The United States has stepped up its criticism of the Pakistani government's truce strategy with the Taliban, saying that it has failed to quell infiltration into neighboring Afghanistan and enabled Al Qaeda to strengthen its safe haven in the tribal areas.