Deposed Pakistan Chief Judge To Lawyers: Resist Crackdown

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan - Though under house arrest and surrounded by soldiers, Pakistan's deposed chief justice managed to get his hands on a mobile phone.

The result was a defiant call to a gathering of lawyers, urging them to rise up against the imposition of emergency rule by Pakistan's president, Gen. Pervez Musharraf, and his crackdown on the opposition that has left thousands in custody.

"Go to every corner of Pakistan and give the message that this is the time to sacrifice," Iftikhar Mohammad Chaudhry told the lawyers. "The army has violated the constitution, and there are no grounds for the government to impose the emergency."

Hundreds of lawyers cheered. "Chaudhry! Chaudhry!" they chanted. "Musharraf is a criminal!"

Chaudhry's call for resistance was recorded as an MP3 file and passed on to protesters across the nation. Local TV stations aired it via satellite.

The government, meanwhile, considered a delay in parliamentary elections despite Western demands they be held on schedule in January to bring democracy to a nuclear-armed country dogged by political uncertainty and rising Islamic militancy.

Fragile security in the northwest - cited by officials as a reason for suspension of the constitution - deteriorated further as pro-Taliban militants seized a town from outnumbered security forces.

While Musharraf says emergency powers are needed so the government can better fight Islamic extremists, his crackdown has been aimed at lawyers and liberal political activists opposing his rule. In particular, the Supreme Court had chipped away at his powers this year.

After Chaudhry spoke, hundreds of police in the central city of Multan blocked about 1,000 lawyers from leaving a district court complex to stage a street rally in defiance of a ban on protests. Both sides pelted each other with stones, and officers swung clubs to scatter the crowd. At least three lawyers and three officers were injured, some bleeding from the head. Violence also was reported at a rally by lawyers in the eastern city of Gujranwala.

On Tuesday, armed followers of a pro-Taliban cleric seized the Matta region of the Swat Valley, a former tourist destination where fighting has raged since July. About two dozen police officers and several militiamen manning four security posts in and around Matta town gave up without a fight. "We didn't harm the police and soldiers and allowed them to go to their homes as they didn't fight our mujahedeen," said Sirajuddin, a militant spokesman who goes by one name.