Police officers armed with tear gas and clubs attacked thousands of protesting lawyers in the city of Lahore today and rounded up lawyers in other cities as the government of the Pakistani president, Gen. Pervez Musharraf, faced the first signs of concerted resistance to the imposition of emergency rule on Saturday.

In a showdown this afternoon between the government and the news media, hundreds of journalists and printers at the Jang Group, Pakistan’s largest media group, confronted the police and officials from the government’s press information department at the offices of Awam, the afternoon newspaper in Karachi.

The government officials ordered the newspaper’s editor, Nazeer Leghari, not to print a supplement, and the police threatened to close down the plant, according to a statement issued by the Jang Group. When the newspaper’s management refused to obey, the officials withdrew, the statement said.

Eric Edelman, an under secretary of defense, was meant to head an American delegation to the talks, beginning on Tuesday, but the meetings will be delayed until conditions are “more conducive to achieving the important objectives of all those who value democracy and a constitutional role,” said Elizabeth Colton, a spokeswoman at the American Embassy.

“The resistance is unlikely to succeed unless the political parties come into the process,” said Hasan Askari Rizvi, an analyst in Lahore who teaches at the School for Advanced International Studies at Johns Hopkins University.

In a telephone interview from her home in Karachi, Ms. Bhutto, who returned to Pakistan last month with the blessing of the United States, said she would fly to Islamabad on Wednesday, where she hoped to meet with other opposition political parties.

She insisted a rally planned by her party would go ahead on Friday in Rawalpindi. It would be staged as a protest rather than a political gathering, she said.

“We decided this would be a protest meeting where we would protest the imposition of military rule,” she said. "This protest movement will continue until the Constitution is restored."

“I hope she resists,” said Syeda Abida Hussain, a former Pakistani ambassador to the United States. “If she co-operates, she will be politically annihilated.”