June 17, 2008	Tuesday	Jamadi-us-Sani 12, 1429

WASHINGTON, June 16: Deposed Chief Justice Iftikhar Mohammad Chaudhry told his first tele-conference in the United States on Monday that he was struggling to restore the supremacy of the Constitution and the rule of law in Pakistan.

“We are trying to establish rule of law to make ourselves truly civilised people,” he said. “No nation can be free without the rule of law and the supremacy of the Constitution.”

He told the audience, which included a former US attorney general, Ramsey Clark, Senator Mike Gravel, an assembly member from Iowa, Abdul Samad, and Mr Chaudhry’s lawyer Athar Minallah, that the lawyers’ long march was achieved after remarkable sacrifices by the legal fraternity.

The lawyers, he said, would continue their struggle until it achieves its objectives.

Mr Chaudhry noted that an international civil society was already emerging and in today’s world it was no longer possible to stay aloof from the struggles of other people.

The international community, he said, cannot allow Pakistan to return to the kind of ‘barbarism and despotic rule’ demonstrated on Nov 3, 2007.

He said on issues like the one championed by the lawyers’ movement in Pakistan “people do not look at countries and boundaries; they look at rules and principles.”

The deposed chief justice said that his struggle was not for personal goals but for a larger cause, “to transform the Pakistani society, which stands at a crossroads.”

Pakistan, he said, can either take the path that goes to suicide-bombings and mob-rule or go in the direction of rule of law and justice for the common man.

“We want to establish our system on principles, not on the whims and desire of an individual,” he said.

Former US attorney general Ramsey Clark told the chief justice that he wholeheartedly supported the lawyers’ movement and their demand that all judges be restored to their pre-Nov 3 positions.