(AFP) – Mar 16, 2008

ISLAMABAD (AFP) — Pakistan's new parliament is slated to convene Monday, setting the stage for a showdown between key US ally President Pervez Musharraf and a coalition government that has vowed to take him on.

The party of slain ex-prime minister Benazir Bhutto will lead the coalition after winning the most seats in elections in February, with the grouping of former premier Nawaz Sharif, whom Musharraf ousted in 1999, as junior partner.

Musharraf faces a fight for his political survival after his backers were trounced at the polls, with voters showing their anger over growing Islamic militancy and a host of economic problems.

Security will be tight for the inauguration of the new parliament at 11:00 am (0600 GMT), following a bombing targeting foreigners at an Islamabad restaurant on Saturday that left a Turkish woman dead and several western diplomats hurt.

Politicians are also at risk following the assassination of Bhutto in a gun and suicide attack at an election rally on December 27 in the garrison city of Rawalpindi, which adjoins the capital.

"The security will be watertight for the convening of parliament. We are not leaving anything to chance," interior ministry spokesman Brigadier Javed Cheema told AFP.

The 342-member parliament is meeting with Musharraf's popularity at an all-time low, and with his power already weakened by his resignation as army chief in November. His successor has vowed to keep the army out of politics.

The biggest threat facing Musharraf from the Bhutto and Sharif parties is their pledge to restore some 60 judges whom Musharraf sacked in November under a state of emergency.

Musharraf deposed his arch-foe, chief justice Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry, and the rest of the judiciary to ward off legal challenges to his re-election as president by the outgoing loyalist parliament in October.

But if the judges are restored, the Supreme Court could overturn Musharraf's re-election.

Sharif has hinted that parliament could pursue the president's impeachment.

Musharraf, who has repeatedly rebuffed calls to quit as president, said in a television interview shown late Sunday that "we have to run a democratic system. We are not a dictatorship, the system must function."

But in an apparent swipe at Sharif and Bhutto's party, he said Pakistan's recent problems and the need for him to stay in power were due to a "vacuum of proper leadership."

"That is why there is turbulence, this is due to leadership failure," he said in the interview shown on Geo News.

Analysts say the former commando, who is central to Washington's "war on terror" against Al-Qaeda and the Taliban, appears to be ready to battle for his position.

One way he could do this is by fuelling old rivalries between Bhutto's Pakistan People's Party -- which is now headed by her widower, Asif Ali Zardari -- and Sharif's Pakistan Muslim League-Q.

The parties were at each others' throats in the 1990s as they twice swapped periods in power.

A row is also brewing over who will be the next prime minister.

Bhutto loyalist and PPP vice-president Makhdoom Amin Fahim had been the prime contender, but party officials say Zardari now wants the post himself.

The two parties and their smaller coalition partner, the Awami National Party, which ousted Islamic fundamentalists in northwest Pakistan in the elections, are set to have separate meetings before parliament starts.

Neither Zardari nor Sharif have seats in the new parliament but both are expected to contest by-elections that are due in May.

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