Pakistan's Supreme Court reinstated Chief Justice Iftikhar Chaudhry in an historic ruling on Friday.

"The reference has been set aside and the chief justice has been reinstated," Justice Khalil-ur-Rehman Ramday, the head of the 13-member bench, said at the end of the two-month-old case.

President Pervez Musharraf suspended the country's top judge four months earlier, which sparked a nationwide lawyers' movement to defend the judiciary's independence and handed opposition parties a hot issue in an election year.

On a number of occasions pro-Chaudhry protests have turned violent. At an attempt to address a rally of lawyers in Karachi on May 12 about 40 people were killed when pro-government activists clashed with opposition supporters hoping to welcome Chaudhry to the city.

Former prime minister Benazir Bhutto, who hopes to return from self-exiled for elections and has held talks with Musharraf's emissaries over a possible deal, said the ruling could calm down Pakistan's political scene.

"I welcome the development of this restoration of the chief justice ... this will help defuse some of the frustrations but not all of the frustrations," she told journalists in London.

The charges against Chaudhry included using influence to get his son a job, fiddling petrol expenses and that he had a penchant for expensive cars.

The government filed a statement in the court last month in which it also accused Chaudhry of harassing judges, showing bias in appointments and intimidating police and civil servants.

Musharraf had earlier said he would accept whatever decision the court reached regarding Chaudhry, and his Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz issued a statement saying much the same.

"I would like to emphasize that we must all accept the verdict with grace and dignity reflective of a mature nation.

"This is not the time to claim victory or defeat. The constitution and the law have prevailed and must prevail at all times," Aziz said.

Political analyst and newspaper columnist Ayaz Amir said the rare decision against the government showed Pakistan possessed the strongest Supreme Court in its history.

(China Daily via agencies July 21, 2007)