WASHINGTON, May 11: US Assistant Secretary of State Richard Boucher has advised Pakistani leaders to avoid a confrontation with President Pervez Musharraf, the US media reported on Sunday.

Mr Boucher met PPP leader Asif Ali Zardari and former Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif in London earlier on Sunday, but a US Embassy official in Islam-abad said they did not discuss the judicial crisis.

The prestigious Wall Street Journal, however, quoted a senior PPP official as saying that the US official had urged the two leaders “not to take measures that could push the government into direct confrontation with Mr Musharraf”.

The report also quoted federal Education Minister Ahsan Iqbal as saying that the PML-N “will have no justification to remain in the government if the judges were not reinstated”.

Another report, distributed by a news agency, said that the failure of the talks over the judicial dispute in London had raised the “prospect that the three-month-old democratic government will collapse in disarray”.

The report noted that while Mr Sharif demanded restoration of all the judges, including former chief justice Iftikhar Chaudhry, Mr Zardari wanted them restored but only briefly.

A report published in The Washington Post said that the new Pakistani government was almost certain to miss the second deadline for restoring sacked judges, “rekindling speculation that the government might collapse”.

The report said that Mr Zardari favoured linking the reinstatement of the judges to a constitutional package that would curb the president’s powers by removing his right to dismiss the government.

He also wants to sideline Justice Chaudhry who became a “cause célèbre” after he defied pressure from Mr Musharraf to resign in March last year.

Another report published in more than a dozen US newspapers noted that the failure of the London talks had “increased the likelihood the ruling coalition could shatter after just six weeks in power and plunge the country back into political turmoil”.