March 31, 2008	Monday	Rabi-ul-Awwal 22, 1429

WASHINGTON, March 30: The United States should support the popular demand for the restoration of judiciary and reach out to the people, said scholars and experts at a one-day seminar on the post-election Pakistan.

The views expressed at the seminar are shared by US politicians too. In statements issued during the weekend, leading candidates for the 2008 presidential race from both Republican and Democratic parties pledged to enhance US ties with the people of Pakistan.

“We relied on the Shah of Iran, the autocratic rulers of Egypt, the generals of Pakistan, the Saudi royal family and even, for a time, on Saddam Hussein,” said John McCain, the presumptive Republican nominee. But that game has ended and the “change is occurring, whether we want it or not.”

The change that the Feb 18 election has brought to the US attitude towards Pakistan was evident at the seminar as well where Bushra Aitzaz, wife of the Supreme Court Bar Association president Aitzaz Ahsan, received a warm welcome for her role in the lawyers’ movement.

She made a strong case for the reinstatement of judges, including Chief Justice Iftikhar Chaudhry, who were deposed during the emergency period last year.

The lawyers, she said, had given 30 days to the new government to reinstate the judges “and if it is not done, we are going to re-launch our movement”, she said.

An independent judiciary, she argued, would strengthen the parliament and prevent future military takeovers.

Mrs Ahsan also urged President Pervez Musharraf to step down, saying that he had no place in the new democratic set-up in Pakistan.

Some speakers focused on US-Pakistan relations, urging the US administration to realise that the Feb 18 elections had changed the entire political scenario in Pakistan.

“The United States should allow Pakistan to function as a sovereign democracy,” said Dr Riffat Hussain, a professor at Islamabad’s Quaid-i-Azam University.