Bhutto to return to Pakistan by year end

BRITAIN: Pakistan’s former prime minister Benazir Bhutto will return to her homeland by the end of this year and hopes to hold office again, she said in a newspaper interview.

Bhutto also confirmed that she had had “back-channel” contacts with the regime of President Pervez Musharraf, but denied there was any “understanding” between them about her future.

“I plan to go back to Pakistan by the end of the year whether Mr Musharraf would like it or whether he would not like it,” she told the Times, calling for corruption cases against her and family members to be dropped. “There have been ‘back-channel’ contacts with Musharraf for some time (but) they have not led to an understanding.

“And so all this talk of an ‘understanding’ I find very confusing.”

Musharraf is negotiating to win Bhutto’s support, a minister and officials said earlier this month, as the president faces a series of challenges to his rule, including a crisis over the removal of Pakistan’s chief justice.

Bhutto, chair of the Pakistan People’s Party (PPP), said it was too early to start thinking about working alongside Musharraf.

She accused the military leader’s party of believing that “they can rig the election so there’s no need for free election or a future parliament headed by the PPP...which is why it is premature to talk about working alongside General Musharraf at this stage.”

But she also did not rule out becoming prime minister again, with Musharraf as president, despite a ban on politicians serving more than two terms, as she has.

“If the people vote for my party and parliament elects me as prime minister, it would be an honour for me to take up that role and General Musharraf would be there as president, so I think that a good working relationship between him and me would be a necessity for Pakistan,” she said.

Pakistan is expected to hold elections at the end of this year or early next and the Times said that Bhutto, who is in exile in Dubai and London, has had high level contacts with Washington and possibly Britain about her plans.

She said she would not reveal full details about her plans for a return as she fears being arrested or killed.

“I think the threat very much remains because my politics can disturb not only the military dictatorship in Pakistan, but it has a fall-out on Al-Qaeda and a fall-out on the Taliban,” she said in remarks quoted by the paper.

Bhutto stressed that she believed democracy could work in Pakistan “if the West stops upholding military dictatorships through their financial and political support.”

“Our tragedy has been that the military has been able to exploit the West’s strategic interest in Afghanistan for almost two decades,” she said.

London, Sunday, AFP