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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