Pakistan's Sharif Says He's No Extremist

Former Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, left, speaks as his brother Shahbaz Sharif looks on at a press conference at his home in Lahore, Pakistan Monday Nov. 26, 2007. Pakistan's election commission on Saturday Dec. 1, 2007, rejected the candidacy of Shahbaz Sharif for the upcoming election, saying Shahbaz had defaulted on a bank loan and was allegedly involved in a murder case in 1998 while chief minister of Punjab province. (AP Photo/Greg Baker) (Greg Baker - AP)

"At the time when Nawaz Sharif was uncertain whether to respond to the Indian nuclear test, she had famously challenged him to test Pakistan's bomb by taking off her bangles and throwing them into the assembled crowd _ suggesting that he was not man enough for the job," recalled a Pakistani analyst, Dr. Pervez Hoodbhoy, a vocal secularist and anti-nuclear campaigner.

And after Sharif's nuclear declaration last week, Bhutto quickly countered that it was her father, Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, also a former premier, who defiantly vowed in 1974 to develop nuclear weapons even if his countrymen had to eat grass to accomplish it.

It is Bhutto whom the Bush administration has reportedly been pushing to ally with Musharraf, who has been America's strongest ally against a resurgent Taliban and al-Qaida.

Since returning, Sharif has been a standard-bearer for Musharraf's opponents. He refuses to deal with the newly retired army general, calls his presidency illegal, and demands the reinstatement of Supreme Court judges fired because Musharraf couldn't be sure how they would rule in a crucial court case that could have stripped him of the presidency.

Sharif has said he will boycott the January parliamentary elections unless Musharraf restores the Supreme Court bench that existed before emergency rule was imposed Nov. 3.

"We don't want to boycott the elections. If there is free and fair elections we can win. But there is no point in Musharraf taking off his uniform, or lifting emergency rule unless the judiciary is reinstated with dignity and honor," Sharif said.

Musharraf filled the Supreme Court bench with loyalists, jailed hundreds of human rights workers, civil society activists and lawyers while saying it was rising religious extremism that forced him to impose emergency rule. He has promised to lift the emergency Dec. 16, roughly three weeks before Jan. 8 ballot.

Sharif is an unlikely champion of the judiciary, having fired a Supreme Court chief justice himself back in 1997 and defending his party members storming the Supreme Court.

Washington wants to know if Sharif will be an ally in the war on terrorism.

"We've had a good record of working with the Musharraf government in routing out al-Qaida and capturing or killing al-Qaida," President Bush said in an interview with AP on Tuesday. "And I would be concerned about any leader who didn't understand the urgency of dealing with radicals and extremists who want to attack the United States and/or any other nation."

Lisa Curtis, senior research fellow in the Asia Studies program at the conservative Heritage Foundation, said Sharif would carry on Musharraf's focus on the war on terror notwithstanding his close relationship with religious parties.

"Sharif is seen as closer to the religious parties, but if he came to power he'd understand the importance of cooperating with the U.S.," said Curtis. "Sharif doesn't want to set up a theological government."