A leading Pakistani lawyer said yesterday that the Bush administration’s “silence” has “stalled the process” of reinstating 60 ousted Supreme Court and other Pakistani appellate judges.

In a breakfast talk yesterday at the New York City Bar Association, Aitzaz Ahsan, the president of the Supreme Court Bar Association of Pakistan, criticized the White House for not speaking “a word, a syllable” to protest the five-month house arrest of Pakistan’s chief justice, Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry.