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Tuesday, 26 March 2013

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Musharraf vows to 'save' Pakistan

PAKISTAN: Pakistan's former military ruler Pervez Musharraf returned home on Sunday after more than four years in exile, defying a Taliban death threat and vowing to risk his life to "save" the country.

"I have come back home today. Where are those who used to say I would never come back?" the former dictator, who plans to stand in a historic May 11 general election, told supporters at Karachi airport.

The upcoming election will be the first democratic transition of power in the history of the nuclear-armed country dominated by periods of military rule and struggling with a weak economy, chronic instability and poverty.

Shortly before Musharraf's arrival, Pakistan selected a caretaker Prime Minister, retired judge Mir Hazar Khan Khoso, to guide the country through the elections.

"I have been ordered by my people to come back and save our Pakistan, even at the risk of my life. I want to tell all those who are making such threats that I have been blessed by Allah the Almighty," Musharraf said.

Security concerns forced him to scrap plans to hold a public rally at the Karachi tomb of Pakistan's founding father Mohammad Ali Jinnah after the Taliban threatened to send a squad of suicide bombers to assassinate him.

Musharraf seized power in a bloodless coup as army chief in 1999 but left the country after resigning in 2008, when Asif Ali Zardari was elected president following the murder of his wife, Bhutto.

As ruler he became the target of Islamist extremists for making Pakistan a key US ally in the "war on terror" after the 9/11 attacks. He escaped three Al-Qaeda assassination attempts.

When Bhutto returned to Karachi from eight years in exile on October 18, 2007, bomb attacks killed 139 people in the deadliest single terror attack on Pakistani soil.

She was assassinated two months later. Her son Bilawal Bhutto Zardari, who is chairman of the ruling Pakistan People's Party, has accused Musharraf of her murder. On Saturday, a suicide bomber killed 17 Pakistani soldiers by ramming a water tanker packed with explosives into a checkpoint in the tribal district of North Waziristan in the northwest.

Police at the airport said 1,000 well-wishers turned out although an AFP reporter said the number appeared about half that.

AFP

 

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