Pakistan's former PM Nawaz Sharif stepped up his attack on President Pervez Musharraf, suggesting he could be hanged while addressing thousands of protesters outside the presidency.
A huge crowd of around 20,000 took part in the demonstration in Islamabad
ISLAMABAD: Pakistan's former prime minister Nawaz Sharif stepped up his attack on President Pervez Musharraf, suggesting he could be hanged while addressing thousands of protesters outside the presidency.
''We asked you to quit with honour after the election but you didn't,'' Sharif told the crowd, referring to Musharraf.
''Now people have given a new judgement for you ... they want you to be held accountable,'' he said in the early hours today.
The crowd, officially estimated at up to 20,000, chanted “hang Musharraf” as it listened to Sharif. ''Is hanging only for politicians?'' asked Sharif, referring to former prime minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, hanged by a military dictator in 1979. ''These blood-sucking dictators must be held accountable.''
The demonstration, a few hundred metres from the presidency and parliament buildings, marked the climax of an almost week-long rolling protest across the country led by lawyers, though by the end they were easily outnumbered by Sharif party activists.
The US and other Western allies fear prolonged political instability in the nuclear-armed Muslim nation will play into the hands of Islamist militants and undermine the US-led campaign against terrorism.
Sharif has called for Musharraf to be tried for treason for tearing up the constitution during a brief spell of emergency rule late last year and for the coup nearly nine years ago.
Sharif’s party came second in an election in February that resulted in defeat for pro-Musharraf parties, and brought to power a coalition government led by the Pakistan People's Party of assassinated former PM Benazir Bhutto.
Asif Ali Zardari is trying to take away Musharraf's powers through changes to the constitution that will take months to pass, and the PPP is worried that Sharif is making more political capital by seeking Musharraf's humiliation.
Sharif was barred from contesting the election, but he will contest a by-election on June 26 for a National Assembly seat.
Treading a careful line, Zardari congratulated the lawyers on their ''long march'', a cross-country convoy of cars that set off days ago for the capital. Political parties backing the lawyers' movement hope that reinstating the judges will lead to Musharraf's ouster.
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