Ashraf emerges as 4-party candidate in Pakistan premier election.

ISLAMABAD, June 22 Kyodo

Pakistan's former Cabinet minister Raja Pervez Ashraf has emerged as the consensus candidate of the Pakistan Peoples Party and its three allies in Friday's parliamentary election of a new prime minister, a PPP leader said.

"The Pakistan Peoples Party and (its) allies have agreed on Raja Pervez Ashraf as the joint candidate," Khurshid Shah told a press conference also attended by representatives from the Muttahida Quami Movement, the Awami National Party and the Pakistan Muslim League (Q), the three PPP allies.

Ashraf, a senior PPP leader, was minister for water and power and IT minister in the previous government of Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gillani, who was sacked by the Supreme Court earlier this week.

The PPP decision to rally behind Ashraf has put two other PPP prime ministerial hopefuls -- former textile industry minister Makhdoom Shahabuddin and former information minister Qamar Zaman Kaira -- out of the race.

"I have to abide by the decision of my party," said Kaira, who was also present at the press conference.

Two other candidates -- Fazal ur-Rehman of the rightwing political party Jamiat Ulema Islam and Mehtab Abbasi of the Pakistan Muslim League (N) -- are vying for the premiership.

The 342-member National Assembly will meet later Friday to elect a new prime minister to fill the job left vacant by Gillani.

The tenure of the new prime minister will expire in February 2013, and the date of parliamentary elections will be announced before the end of November this year.

Shahabuddin, President Asif Zardari's choice for prime minister, dropped out of the race a day after an antinarcotics court in Rawalpindi issued an arrest warrant against him in connection with a government drug probe.