WASHINGTON, April 15: The Pakistani lobby in the US Congress is strongly favouring the demand for the reinstatement of judges, with some lawmakers saying that US assistance to Pakistan should be conditioned to the issue.

Congresswoman Sheila Jackson Lee, who co-chairs the 67-member caucus, told a Capitol Hill briefing that she believed “no democracy is complete without an independent judiciary” and US lawmakers expect the new Pakistani government to establish an independent judiciary in Pakistan.

Caleb Rossiter, a top aide for Congressman Bill Delahunt who heads the Foreign Affairs Subcommittee on Human Rights, said that US lawmakers would “not accept an independent judiciary without the judges” and asked Pakistani experts present in the briefing if they would support attaching conditions to US assistance to Pakistan for achieving judicial independence.

Both Pakistani experts -- Aitzaz Ahsan’s son Ali Ahsan and Nadeem Azam, director of the Human Rights Studies Centre at the Peshawar University -- said they would, while Mr Azam urged US lawmakers to “do more”.“We want to attach conditions but we do not want it to be seen as another F-16,” said Mr Rossiter, referring to a US law which blocked the sale of F-16 aircraft to Pakistan in the 1990s.

Congress has already withheld $50 million from annual US assistance for Pakistan for the next fiscal year, promising to release it once the judicial dispute is settled.

Congresswoman Jackson Lee, however, stressed more on the need to create an independent judiciary than the restoration of judges, arguing that the country needs “an independent judicial system” to provide justice to its people.

She urged the US Congress to stay engaged with the democratic movement in Pakistan and told the new government in Islamabad to realise that “it cannot be considered complete with a broken judicial system.”

The congresswoman also urged the American Bar Association and other legal bodies in the United States to send delegations to Pakistan, support the lawyers’ movement and create opportunities for Pakistani lawyers to work with US firms as interns.She noted that in the Pakistani system, the president was as much a part of the government as the prime minister and parliament were, adding that in this system “President Pervez Musharraf has many responsibilities”.

The congresswoman urged all three to work together to remove poverty and suffering from their country.

Justice Richard J. Goldstone, a former chief prosecutor of the UN International Criminal Tribunals, recalled how US support allowed lawyers and judges in South Africa to dispense justice even during the apartheid era.

“It was very lonely being a judge under the apartheid,” said Mr Goldstone who was a judge in South Africa during that era. “But support from US lawyers and judges and others in this country helped.”

He urged the United States to provide similar support to Pakistan.

Ali Ahsan told the briefing that because of the US position on the judicial issue and because of its support to President Musharraf, “many in Pakistan see the US as an enemy and it is very difficult for them to see otherwise as long as Washington does not change its position”.

He rejected the suggestion that the former chief justice had released terror suspects, insisting that those ordered to appear before the court were innocent and were arrested unlawfully by Pakistani authorities.