Opposition supporters to march on judge's home in Pakistan

The opposition party of Pakistan’s former Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif planned to stage a march today on the heavily guarded home of the country’s deposed chief justice.

The march will publicly challenge an electoral ban on the party’s leader.

Police were erecting barbed wire barricades and beefing up security around the official residence of the Supreme Court’s chief judge, Iftikhar Mohammed Chaudhry.

He has been under house arrest in Islamabad since November 3, when President Pervez Musharraf declared a state of emergency and sacked most of the top court’s justices.

Meanwhile, Mr Sharif’s Pakistan Muslim League-N and the Pakistan Peoples Party of former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto were reported to be nearing agreement on a joint set of conditions for their participation in parliamentary elections scheduled for January 8.