Brussels - The European Union on Monday said the Pakistani government's decision to reinstate the country's sacked top judge would allow the country to move forward and confront its real enemies - extremism and fundamentalism.

"I am very positive about what has happened. This is a good step forward," said the bloc's external affairs commissioner, Benita Ferrero-Waldner.

Ferrero-Waldner was part of the EU troika that held talks in Prague last week with Pakistani Foreign Minister Makhdoom Shah Mahmood Qureshi.

On that occasion, "we said to Pakistan that we wanted to see the government reach a compromise with the opposition," the commissioner said.

In her view, Monday's deal would allow President Asif Ali Zardari and opposition leader Nawaz Sharif to "work together to confront the political enemies that are there," namely "extremism and fundamentalism," Earlier Monday, the Pakistani government gave in to opposition demands to reinstate the former Supreme Court chief justice Iftikhar Chaudhry, sacked in 2007 by former military strongman Pervez Musharraf.

The move pushed back a tide of protests that threatened to drag the nuclear-armed Islamic republic into social unrest. (dpa)