Pakistani police arrested supporters of opposition political parties in Karachi on Thursday.
RAIWIND, Pakistan — In an effort to defuse the Pakistani political crisis, the American ambassador, Anne W. Patterson, traveled to see the opposition leader Nawaz Sharif to urge him to reconcile with Pakistan’s president, Mr. Sharif said.
Lawyers at the Civil Court in Lahore on Thursday. Pakistan’s lawyers are in the forefront of the antigovernment protests.
Pakistani police officers arrested protesters in Karachi on Thursday as opponents of the government prepared to march to the capital this weekend.
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Later on Thursday, the Obama administration’s special envoy to Pakistan, Richard C. Holbrooke, spoke by video conference call to Pakistan’s president, Asif Ali Zardari, Mr. Zardari’s office announced. Mr. Holbrooke also spoke to Mr. Sharif by telephone, Mr. Holbrooke’s office said.
The involvement of two senior American officials prompted speculation here that the United States was trying to broker a deal that would ease the standoff between the rivals and end the potential for violence as a coalition of opposition and citizens’ groups prepared for a march that the government had banned.
The Obama administration apparently fears that the rising tensions between the politicians could further derail Pakistan’s efforts to quell a growing insurgency by Al Qaeda and the Taliban.
Mr. Sharif, who plans to appear at antigovernment rallies this weekend, said he told Ms. Patterson that the next move was up to Mr. Zardari.
“We went out of our way to show patience, tolerance, despite the broken promises of Mr. Zardari,” Mr. Sharif said. “All of a sudden they struck, they delivered a very heavy blow; it was like you stab someone in the back.”
Mr. Sharif made several demands of Mr. Zardari: remove the federal rule imposed on his home base, Punjab Province; rescind the judicial ruling that denied Mr. Sharif and his brother the right to run in elections; and restore an independent judiciary.
The government has said it acted to restore law and order and subdue Mr. Sharif, whom it accused of trying to foment revolution and court Islamists to buttress his power. Mr. Sharif’s supporters accuse the government of suppressing dissent.
A presidential spokesman pointed out Friday that Mr. Sharif’s history was less than perfect. “Mr Sharif has a long history of taking unreasonable positions and pretending to be principled,” said the spokesman, Farhatullah Babar. “As someone who ordered his party supporters to storm the Supreme Court in 1998, his claims to fight for judicial independence sounds so hollow.”
On Wednesday night, Mr. Holbrooke spoke to Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gilani, who has distanced himself from Mr. Zardari by saying that federal rule of the provincial assembly in Punjab should end quickly. The crackdown against protesters continued Thursday as hundreds of police officers in riot gear used batons against lawyers and protesters outside the Sindh High Court in Karachi. More than a dozen lawyers were arrested, including a leader of the movement, Munir Malik, who was imprisoned during President Pervez Musharraf’s rule, and a leader of Jamaat-e-Islami, a right-wing Islamic party that supports the lawyers.
Later, the police in Karachi took the keys of the buses and vans lined up at a toll plaza, hoping to halt a long march from several sites in Pakistan that is expected to converge on Islamabad, the capital, on Monday. Lawyers dressed in black suits scuffled with the police at the toll plaza, and several were dragged into police vans.
The government imposed a law in the two most populous provinces, Sindh and Punjab, that prohibits any gathering of more than four people.
The police have arrested hundreds of political workers of Mr. Sharif’s party.
In an interview here lasting more than an hour, Mr. Sharif said the impression in Washington that he was too close to radical Islamists was misconceived. Mr. Musharraf and Mr. Zardari had spread the idea as a way of settling political scores, he said.
One reason Mr. Sharif is seen by some American officials as being sympathetic to the Islamists is that he introduced legislation as prime minister that called on the federal government to enforce Islamic law. The bill passed the lower house of the Parliament but failed in the upper house.
Mr. Sharif said he was well aware of the terrorist threat to Pakistan, but as the Obama administration was now doing, he said, Pakistan had to see what “new approaches” should be used to deal with the insurgency.
He made it clear he believed that a dialogue with those militants who would talk was preferable to military actions, and he said he believed in mobilizing the nation in a “united front” against terrorism. He accused Mr. Zardari of failing to curb insurgents in two areas now controlled by the Taliban. “These matters are so huge, Mr. Zardari fails to gauge the magnitude of those problems in the tribal areas, in Swat,” he said.
“If we start fighting democracy, how are we going to fight terror?” Mr. Sharif said.
Mr. Sharif was prime minister twice in the 1990s. His second term ended when he was ousted in October 1999 in a coup by Mr. Musharraf, then a general.
From his time as prime minister, Mr. Sharif talks of warm feelings toward former President Bill Clinton and Hillary Rodham Clinton, now secretary of state. In July 1999, Mr. Sharif rushed to Washington to seek Mr. Clinton’s help in ending a nuclear standoff between India and Pakistan.
Many Pakistani commentators have worried that the army will oust the civilian government if the conflict between Mr. Zardari and Mr. Sharif persists.
But Mr. Sharif said he doubted that the military under Gen. Ashfaq Parvez Kayani, who served as his deputy military secretary during his first term as prime minister, would do so. “I think he is a decent man and a professional soldier,” he said.
Mr. Sharif was lying low on Thursday at the mansion that serves as his headquarters on a farm that he inherited from his father. The government sent him a letter on Thursday warning him about security threats.
But he appeared unfazed and said he would join a rally in Lahore on Saturday.
He had not decided whether to join the sit-in in Islamabad that the government had explicitly banned. But his party members will. “The government should allow the sit-in in the capital and ensure the peace,” he said.
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