Pakistan's opposition leader Nawaz Sharif lays direct blame on the government for the ongoing political turmoil and warns of extremist exploitation of the situation.
Sharif giving his first interview since Wednesday, when a court order barred him from elected office, accused President Asif Ali Zardari of "declaring martial law on democracy" and warned that the extremists could take advantage of the ongoing unrest.
The opposition leader's charge echoes the complaints that forced former military ruler Pervez Musharraf to give up his presidency last year.
Sharif said Pakistan is in the middle of a tense time with neighboring India over the deadly militant attack on Mumbai, ongoing issues in the tribal areas and the even bigger issue in the Swat valley.
He added that Zardari's pro-western government is not going to be able to face any of its key tasks if it continues to wage political war on him, he told the Associated Press in the interview conducted at his residence near Lahore.
He said that a surge of political squabbling will surely distract the government from grappling with the Taliban and al-Qaeda threat spreading from the tribal areas along the frontier with Afghanistan. Sharif opined that this confrontation might also feed worries about a military intervention, a frequent result of political turmoil in Pakistan.
"I think we are heading for some sort of unfortunate situation," Sharif said, without elaborating. "There are a lot of forces - the militants, the extremists - they are all there to take advantage."
Sharif's supporters gather at a fire barricade on a Karachi street.
Rioting, which began in Lahore, flared elsewhere for a third consecutive day, with police swinging batons and firing tear gas at stone-throwing youths among hundreds of people who blocked the six-lane highway between the capital, Islamabad, and the nearby city of Rawalpindi. Protesters tore down advertising billboards, smashed street lights and blocked traffic with burning tires.
The Supreme Court ruling upheld a ban on Sharif from contesting elections because of a past criminal conviction related to the 1999 military coup that ended his second term as prime minister and put Musharraf in power. Sharif's brother was also sacked from his position as Punjab governor and was replaced by a Zardari loyalist.
Sharif predicts a similar outpouring of support from lawyers and other groups to back his party, which is the country's second largest political movement and which worked in an uneasy alliance with Zardari's bloc to push out Musharraf.
Their shaky alliance floundered soon after Zardari became president, when he reneged on a promise to reinstate the ousted Supreme Court chief justice. Sharif said there would be no reconciliation with Zardari unless he reinstates Iftikhar Mohammad Chaudhry.View
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