Pakistani lawyers to intensify campaign

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DERA ALLAH YAR, Pakistan, Mar 13 (Agencies): Pakistani lawyers challenging the government will step up their cross-country protest campaign despite beatings and arrests by the police, a rally leader said Friday.

The protest by lawyers and opposition parties for an independent judiciary threatens to bring chaos as President Asif Ali Zardari's government struggles to control spreading Islamist militancy and to revive a sinking economy.

"The way our lawyers were beaten up and arrested, we've decided that we need to intensify our struggle," Ali Ahmed Kurd, president of the Supreme Court bar association and a protest organiser, told reporters in Baluchistan province.

Black-suited lawyers and flag-waving opposition activists launched their so-called long march protest in the cities of Karachi and Quetta Thursday, despite a ban on rallies and the detention of hundreds of activists.

Baton-wielding police clashed with protesters in Karachi, the capital of Sindh province, and arrested several of their leaders as they tried to stop a convoy of cars and buses leaving the city.

Meanwhile, Pakistan's opposition leader predicted President Asif Ali Zardari would not last his full five-year term in office as police Friday turned away another convoy of protesters trying to reach the capital for a major anti-government demonstration.

Authorities have detained several hundred political activists and lawyers in recent days, seeking to thwart a protest movement that is challenging the government's shaky one-year rule just as the West wants to see Pakistan unite and fight against al-Qaida and Taliban extremists.

Activist lawyers are demanding Zardari fulfil a pledge to reinstate judges fired by former President Pervez Musharraf, a general who ousted opposition leader Nawaz Sharif as prime minister in a 1999 coup. The protest movement heated up last month when the Supreme Court banned Sharif and his brother from elected office.