Sharif to attempt return to Pakistan in November
PAKISTAN, Former Pakistani prime minister Nawaz Sharif will try to
return home again in November, two months after his last attempt ended
in failure, his party said Monday.
Sharif flew to Pakistan on September 10 vowing to topple President
Pervez Musharraf, the man who ousted him in a 1999 coup, but he was
bundled onto a plane to Saudi Arabia four hours later.
"Nawaz Sharif will arrive in Pakistan next month, preferably between
November 15-30," Siddique-ul Farooque, a spokesman for the Pakistan
Muslim League-Nawaz party, told AFP.
He said the date and place of Sharif's arrival would be decided and
announced later. Sharif had agreed to remain in Saudi Arabia until 2010
as part of a deal that saw him released from prison in December 2000,
where he was locked up on corruption charges soon after he was ousted.
The ex-premier's deportation defied Pakistan's increasingly
independent Supreme Court, which has been sparring with the president
and ordered the government in August not to hinder Sharif's homecoming.
His party filed a petition challenging his deportation in the Supreme
Court, which is set to hear the appeal on Wednesday.
News of Sharif's fresh attempt comes as another ex-premier, Benazir
Bhutto, is set to return to Pakistan on Thursday from self-imposed
exile, eight years after she was forced to flee on corruption charges.
She is expected to fly into the southern port city of Karachi,
rejecting calls from the Musharraf government to delay her homecoming.
Islamabad, Tuesday, AFP
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