Sharif under house arrest in Pakistan

Pakistan's government placed opposition leader Nawaz Sharif under house arrest to stop him taking part in an anti-government rally.

Mr Sharif's spokesman Pervez Rasheed said hundreds of police surrounded his house today in the eastern city of Lahore.

He said they showed Sharif aides a detention order stipulating Mr Sharif was to be placed under house arrest for three days.

There was no immediate word from Pakistani authorities about the move.

The move will likely damage the democratic credentials of the one-year-old government led by US-backed President Asif Ali Zardari.

The arrest order came hours after the government announced its first major concession in the month-long political crisis by pledging to appeal a disputed court ruling against Mr Sharif and his brother.

The detention order issued today stipulates Mr Sharif and his politician brother Shahbaz Sharif were to be placed under house arrest for three days. Shahbaz was not at home.

Mr Zardari and Mr Sharif are under increasing pressure to reach a settlement from the United States, which fears the government is already bogged down in power struggles when it needs to focus on economic problems, as well as Western demands for more help with the faltering war effort in neighbouring Afghanistan.

Mr Sharif vowed yesterday to go ahead with the protests, even as the government insisted it would enforce a ban, put troops on alert and warned terrorists could bomb the demonstration.

"This is a flood of people. This flood will break all hurdles. This flood will, God willing, reach its destination," Mr Sharif told cheering party workers in Lahore.

Nuclear-armed Pakistan lurched back toward turmoil last month when the Supreme Court disqualified Mr Sharif and his brother from elected office, over convictions dating back to an earlier chapter in Pakistan's often vindictive political history.

Mr Zardari compounded the crisis by dismissing the Sharifs' administration in Punjab, Pakistan's biggest and richest province.

Mr Sharif then threw his support behind plans by activist lawyers to stage a mass sit-in tomorrow in front of Parliament in Islamabad to demand an independent judiciary.