We begin in Pakistan, where after days of negotiations, a tense election campaign, and allegations of vote rigging, the two major political parties there say they have reached an agreement to form a coalition government, keeping Imran Khan supporters out of power. The announcement was made in a late night press conference. These are the two men who will be set to take the top jobs. Asif Ali Zadari, from the center-left Pakistan's People's Party, will be the candidate for the presidency. His second time in the role. And set to reassume the Prime Ministerial role. Also for the second time, from the center-right, Pakistan Muslim League Party, is Shabaz Sharif, the younger brother of former Prime Minister, Nawaz Sharif. Bbc Urdu's Fahad Javed has been following the election closely and gave me this update on the late night announcement.

It was expected that soon there would be some announcement from any of three major parties in Pakistan. And what we saw today in a night press conference, Pakistan's People's Party and Nawaz Sharif's PML and Muslim League Nawaz. They announced that they are going to form a coalition government. There has been quite a lot of back and forth between these two parties before they reached a power-sharing formula. As you just mentioned, that one party is getting the presidency seat and the other one is going to be the Prime Minister. But then that is not it. There are many other federal ministries, for example, and many other key positions which are going to be distributed between the two parties that we would come to know in the coming days. Also, there would be a vote in the parliament for the selection of Prime Minister. We are expecting that the parties which would be sitting on the opposition benches, they would also come up with, they would also nominate their candidate for this post.

Now, these two political dynasties have been arch-rivals in the past. How will they work together?

Yes, these two parties have a long history of building cases against each other, corruption cases that both have been calling politically motivated cases. But in last few years, we have seen that they have been sitting together. For example, these were two major parties to oust former Prime Minister Imran Khan from his office in 2022. Then for the next two years, they successfully ruled the country. Now, once again, there is this alliance. But running the government be easy for Pakistan because for the last two years, there has been a political turmoil, and then there is economic instability in the country. Pakistan's economy has been on the verge of default. With that, there is a rising internal security situation. There has been terrorist attacks across the country. So these are the challenges that any coalition that forms the government in Pakistan will be facing, and these are not easy to tackle.

You mentioned Imran Khan there. The opposition is built up of a number of independent MPs, largely Imran Khan supporters. How will politics now work in Pakistan?

As per Pakistani laws, any independent candidates, they have to form, they have to announced their association with some political party within three days of final certification. So Imran Khan's party, they have already announced that they would be joining some small religious parties in the parliament, and that is to get the quota for reserved seats for women and minorities. But it's more likely that they would now be sitting on the opposition benches because they won't have, even after that alliance, they are not going to have the number that is required to form a single government. So they would be sitting on the opposition benches.

Just a quick word on what happens next for Imran Khan.

Imran Khan is in prison. He has been sentenced for a maximum of 14 years in prison. There is no really a legal way out for him to come out, but we are seeing that they are trying to put some pressure. They are going to the courts with cases not only about rigging an election, allegation of rigging an election, but also to get some relief for Imran Khan as well. But for now, we don't see any legal way out for him.