Pakistan's government averted a potentially destabilizing dispute with the judiciary Wednesday, withdrawing orders from the president appointing two judges that the Supreme Court had opposed. Prime Minister Syed Yousaf Raza Gilani said the decision to withdraw the order, which Zardari issued Saturday and the Supreme Court blocked hours later, had dispelled political tension. The clash over the appointments had added to existing tensions between the government and the judiciary. Gilani, speaking to reporters after meeting Chief Justice Iftikhar Chaudhry, said the withdrawal of the orders and their replacement with new ones would boost stability. “This is in the best interests of Pakistan ... and all the political forces in the country and that would strengthen and stabilize the system,” Gilani said. “It is completely over,” Gilani said when asked about the political tension. The row looked set to become a distraction for the government of the nuclear-armed US ally which is already struggling to fight militants and to get a sluggish economy on track. The Supreme Court has said at the weekend that Zardari's orders were apparently a violation of the Constitution as the president had not consulted the Supreme Court chief on the appointments. Lawyers took to the streets in major cities across the country Monday, protesting against Zardari. Pakistani stocks fell early this week as investors worried about instability. Opposition leader Nawaz Sharif, who has been largely supportive of the government, denounced the president Sunday as “the biggest threat to democracy”. Zardari can ill afford to antagonize the judiciary. The row came two months after the Supreme Court threw out an amnesty that had protected Zardari, several top aides and thousands of political activists and civil servants, mostly from corruption charges. Though he is protected by his presidential immunity, he is vulnerable to legal challenges to his 2008 election as president on the grounds that old corruption charges against him made him ineligible.White House hails capture of Taliban leaderThe White House called the capture of a top Taliban military commander “a big success” on Wednesday and said commanders reported a major offensive against the Taliban in southern Afghanistan was going well. “This was the number two Afghan Taliban operational chief. And it's a big success for our mutual efforts in the region,” spokesman Robert Gibbs said, breaking the White House's silence on the capture of Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar in Pakistan this month. “I don't want to get into operationally what might or might not come next, but obviously the capture of Mullah Baradar is a significant win,” Gibbs said at his daily news briefing. Baradar, the most senior Taliban commander ever arrested in Pakistan, is in Pakistani custody, and the White House knows of no plans for that to change, he said. The arrest of Baradar followed months of behind-the-scenes prodding by US officials who saw inaction by Islamabad as a major threat to their Afghan war strategy. A Pakistani intelligence official said security agents had been searching for Baradar in the southwestern city of Quetta, where the US says a Taliban leadership council is based. “Sensing that he might be arrested, he somehow slipped out of Quetta and into Karachi, maybe in disguise. That's where we arrested him, about four days back,” said the official.
