New Delhi: Hours after the Musharraf regime in Pakistan accorded a rude welcome to former Pakistan premier Nawaz Sharif and packed him off to Saudi Arabia on exile, Pakistan People's Party leader Benazir Bhutto on Monday announced her plans to return to Pakistan.
Pakistan's Dawn News confirmed the reports, saying the former prime minister is planning to return to Pakistan next month. A PPP spokesperson in London said Bhutto will return to contest national elections.
Like Sharif, Bhutto too is on an exile in Britain. But unlike Sharif, Bhutto is in talks on a pact with the President, whose popularity has slumped since he tried to fire the Supreme Court chief in March, to let her return.
"Mrs Bhutto has decided to travel to Pakistan," Bhutto's spokesman Wajid Hassan told Reuters Television in an interview. "She has planned it next month, probably. She will announce it on September 14 as to the date of her arrival in Pakistan."
Army chief Musharraf, who seized power from Sharif in 1999, is preparing to seek another term in a presidential election in the national and provincial assemblies some time between September 15 and October 15. A general election is due around the end of the year.
"She has got to go back and lead the party into the elections, to campaign for the party in the elections," Bhutto's spokesman said.
"I'm sure that there will be no compromise on it. She will go back and she will compete for the party and she will definitely win the elections."
Bhutto wants Gen Musharraf to step down as Army Chief, immunity from prosecution for herself and others who ruled in the late 1980s and 1990s and the lifting of a ban on a prime minister serving a third term under a mutual agreement.
"So far they have not signed any deal. They have been engaged in talks among themselves for the peaceful transition to democracy through free and fair, transparent elections," Hassan said.
He said an agreement was close but had not yet been struck as there were still some issues to be resolved.
Bhutto also wants President be stripped of power to dissolve the National Assembly and dismiss governments. In return, her party would bolster Gen Musharraf's support base and help clear the way for him to run for re-election after he quits as Army Chief by backing a constitutional change waiving a bar on state servants running for office.
Bhutto has already been prime minister of Pakistan twice. On both occasions she was dismissed from office by the president for suspected corruption.
(With Reuters inputs)
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