Pakistan arrests opposition leaders ahead of planned rallies

Nawaz Sharif is the head of the Pakistan Muslim League N party. Photograph: Farooq Naeem/AFP/Getty images

The crisis engulfing Pakistan deepened this morning after the government issued orders for opposition leaders, including Imran Khan and Nawaz Sharif, to be placed under house arrest ahead of planned rallies against the ruling administration.

Police have arrested scores of lawyers and opposition leaders today and, according to reports on Pakistani television, orders have been issued for the detention of Sharif, the head of the Pakistan Muslim League N party (PML-N), his brother Shabhaz Sharif, the Jamat-e-Islami leader, Qazi Hussain Ahmed, and Khan, who is the head of Tehreek-e-Insaf.

Many opposition leaders are said to have gone into hiding. Pakistani lawyers, supported by opposition leaders, are due to begin a protest tomorrow dubbed the long march to demand the restoration of judges removed from office by the former president Pervez Musharraf.

President Asif Ali Zardari, husband of the assassinated former prime minister Benazir Bhutto, has failed to fulfil a pledge to restore the justices since being elected last year.

The clampdown will increase fears for the stability of the country as the government struggles to contain violent extremists.

Six Pakistani policemen and a bus driver were killed, and six Sri Lankan cricket players and two team officials wounded last week when heavily armed men attacked a bus carrying the visiting team to the venue of the second test against Pakistan.

Rao Iftikhar, the home secretary in eastern Punjab province, said he issued orders for a ban on public gatherings there "so that terrorists cannot take any advantage by targeting political gatherings".

The ban , which gives authorities the right to arrest any protesters, will remain in force for three months, he said.

Punjab is Pakistan's most powerful and populous province and the political stronghold of the PML-N.

Last week's attack on the Sri Lankan cricket team came amid protests following a court ruling banning the former minister Sharif and his brother, who was the chief minister of Punjab, from political office.

In August last year Sharif pulled his party out of a coalition with Zardari's Pakistan People's party (PPP), because of the failure to restore the judiciary. His supporters saw the latest court ruling as a political move engineered by Zardari.

The planned long march would see protesters gather in cities around the country tomorrow before leaving for the capital, Islamabad. They have vowed to stage a sit-in at the parliament building until the judiciary is restored.

The Sindh province home secretary, Arif Ahmed Khan, announced a 15-day ban on public gatherings today to "prevent a bad law-and-order situation". Sindh is the main stronghold of the ruling PPP.

A spokesman for Sharif's party, Sadiqul Farooq, said he received reports from party offices across the country that members were being arrested, but he had no accurate numbers.

Munawar Hassan, a Jamaat-e-Islami leader, said: "Nearly two dozen of our supporters have been detained."

Farhatullah Babar, a spokesman for Zardari, said 18 people had been arrested and would be released once the situation calmed down.

"Some people have announced they are going to defy the ban on public meetings," he said. "It is sad, but this is what the law says."

In the Punjabi city of Multan, the senior police officer Fayyaz Ahmad said 42 Sharif supporters were arrested and "would be dealt with according to the law".

Obama to lay out guidelines to overhaul earmarks

(CNN) -- President Obama on Wednesday will talk about new guidelines aimed at cutting down the number of earmarks in appropriations legislation, one day after the Senate passed a spending bill with nearly 9,000 earmarks, his administration said.

President Obama on Wednesday will announce new "rules of the road" on earmarks, the White House says.

Earmarks are unrelated pet projects that members of Congress insert in spending bills.

Some lawmakers have urged Obama to veto the $410 billion omnibus spending bill -- saying it goes against the president's campaign pledge to bring an end to wasteful spending.

White House officials said Obama will sign the bill to keep key government agencies funded, but the president will lay out the new guidelines on earmarks as a not-so-subtle threat that he could veto future spending bills that do not comply with his objectives.

Obama may sign the bill into law behind closed doors rather than make a public show of it, White House press secretary Robert Gibbs said.

"Although it's not perfect, the president will sign the legislation but demonstrate for all involved rules moving forward that he thinks can make this process work a little bit better," Gibbs said at his daily briefing with reporters.

White House officials have tried to dismiss the pork-laden legislation as "last year's business" that Obama is dealing with reluctantly.

Gibbs added that "over the course of the president's tenure in Washington, dozens of those bills will come to his desk" and Obama wants to make clear "that there will be some new rules of the road" for lawmakers to follow.

Top Democrats, including House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer of Maryland, have suggested lawmakers do not appreciate being dictated to on an issue that is a congressional prerogative.

Asked last week about the administration's plan to put forth guidelines to overhaul earmarks, Hoyer said flatly, "I don't think the White House has the ability to tell us what to do."

He paused and quipped to reporters, "I hope you all got that down."

Given the sensitivity of the issue with fellow Democrats, senior White House aides were reluctant Tuesday evening to preview any of the new "rules of the road" the president will lay out. Obama's schedule for Wednesday includes a public announcement on "earmark reform" in the morning.

Obama's budget director made a vow Sunday that the president will bring a halt to pork-laden bills.

"[Such bills] will not happen when the president has the full legislative and appropriations process in place," Peter Orszag, director of the White House Office of Management and Budget, told CNN's "State of the Union With John King."

He argued that the White House had little choice but to support the omnibus spending bill, which it inherited from the previous administration.

"This is like your relief pitcher coming into the ninth inning and wanting to redo the whole game," Orszag said. "Next year we're going to be the starting pitcher, and the game's going to be completely different."

But House Minority Whip Eric Cantor, R-Virginia, rejected this argument, noting that Obama had vowed to take action against earmarks during the presidential campaign.

"If you make a promise, people expect that you live up to it. And that's why this administration's refusal to go in and change this bill, I think, is a false position," Cantor told "State of the Union."

"There is no way anyone could take what Mr. Orszag has said with any credibility."