Pakistan court adjourns Sharif election case hearing

Pakistan's Supreme Court on Monday adjourned an appeal against a ruling that barred former premier Nawaz Sharif from standing in a parliamentary by-election. The case will be heard again in two weeks' time, said Musa Leghari, the presiding judge of a three-member panel hearing the case. A lower court one week ago barred Sharif from standing in the vote in the eastern city of Lahore. The government then filed an appeal against the decision, after which the Supreme Court delayed the poll. On Monday, an attorney for the men whose original objections led to Sharif being disqualified filed fresh objections, on the grounds that the government could not become involved in the case. "It is an election matter which does not require the government's intervention," said the lawyer, Ahmad Raza Kasuri. Sharif, a leading member of the ruling coalition that is led by slain ex-premier Benazir Bhutto's Pakistan People's Party, did not himself file an appeal and has vowed to defy the court's orders to appear before the judges. Sharif says the judges were among those illegally appointed by President Pervez Musharraf under a state of emergency last November. Deputy Attorney General Raja Abdur Rehman sought two weeks to examine the objections but told reporters outside court that Sharif "fully qualifies to contest the election." "We must allow the people to decide who should be their representative in the national assembly," Rehman said. A return to parliament would put Sharif, the head of the Pakistan Muslim League-N, in a stronger position to challenge Musharraf, the man who ousted him in a 1999 coup.