Former Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif now wants his party to take part in a January general election after failing to clinch a boycott pact with his rival Benazir Bhutto, party aides said.

Sharif had hoped that fellow opposition leader Bhutto would join an alliance of parties seeking to isolate President Pervez Musharraf in protest at his declaration of emergency rule, but now feels he has no choice but to participate.

"After failing to get (Bhutto's) Pakistan People's Party on board, he does not want the field to remain open for all Musharraf's loyalists and he wants to turn the election into a referendum," said Ahsan Iqbal, spokesman for Sharif's faction of the Pakistan Muslim League (PML-N). "His recommendation is that after failing to have People's Party on board, he is in favour of taking part," he added, before a meeting of a cluster of parties with whom Sharif had sought to build a boycott consensus.

He said Sharif wanted the vote to be a referendum on reinstating judges Musharraf deposed on Nov.3 to fend off challenges to his re-election while still army chief.

"We should ask people to vote for us if they want restoration of the judiciary, so that we can block their attempt to legitimise the Nov.3 action through parliament," Iqbal said.

Sharif and Bhutto failed to agree on whether to insist that the judges Musharraf sacked be restored to their positions before the election, and on whether to issue a deadline for other demands they did agree on.

Sharif, who is calling for the judges -- including several deposed Supreme Court judges still under house arrest -- to be reinstated prior to the election, has been barred from running because of past criminal convictions he says were politically motivated.

Bhutto has filed her nomination papers for the election, arguing a boycott would leave the field open for a walkover by Musharraf's allies and says she reserves the right to protest after the vote if she deems it was rigged.