Exiled Pakistan ex-PM heads home

Monday, 10 September 2007

Pakistan's former Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif is heading home at the end of seven years in exile.

Mr Sharif, who was ousted by President Pervez Musharraf in a bloodless coup in 1999, is expected to arrive in the capital Islamabad on Monday morning.

Large numbers of police have set up barricades on the road to the airport.

Boarding his plane in London, Mr Sharif said that if he was arrested upon arrival, that would be "a small price to pay for the country's freedom".

In Islamabad, police have blocked roads to the airport to prevent Mr Sharif's supporters coming to meet him.

Travellers with air tickets are being taken to the airport in special minibuses.

On Sunday, Mr Sharif's party said more than 2,000 supporters had been arrested by the Pakistan authorities.

A spokesman for the Muslim League party (PML-N) said the activists had been arrested over the past four days in Punjab province, Mr Sharif's powerbase.

A provincial police official admitted to detaining several hundred "trouble-makers".

Mr Sharif says he is determined to return to lead a campaign against Gen Musharraf ahead of elections.

The Supreme Court ruled last month that Mr Sharif had the right to return to the country, but the government has urged him to honour the terms of an exile deal which, it says, bars him from coming back for another three years.

Flight change

Mr Sharif has denied agreeing to such a deal and is returning to Islamabad.

A group of political supporters and journalists are travelling with him on a Pakistan International Airlines flight, which was delayed by more than one hour as a passenger was apparently taken ill.

Mr Sharif's aides changed the flight at the last moment in an apparent effort to outwit the Pakistani authorities.

The former prime minister plans to lead a triumphal motorcade from Islamabad to Lahore, his political power base, but the government has hinted that he may be arrested - or even deported.

Before setting off on Sunday, Mr Sharif said he was not scared of the possibility that General Musharraf would send him straight to jail.

"He kept me in prison for 14 months after staging a coup d'etat against my government and I'm struggling from that very day," the former prime minister said.

"I have a duty, I have a responsibility, I have a national obligation to fulfil at all costs and that is democracy," he told the BBC's Owen Bennett-Jones who is travelling with him.

However, he decided at the last moment to leave his brother Shahbaz, also a politician, behind "to hold the fort" if General Musharraf jails the former prime minister.

Mr Musharraf has made no secret of his contempt for Nawaz Sharif, describing him as corrupt and incompetent.

But for the army, a decision to arrest him is as much a political as a legal decision, says our correspondent.

The military do not want to make Nawaz Sharif into a political martyr but they also do not want to see him campaigning for power, he says.

The government has said his return would destabilise the political environment ahead of a general election which is due in coming months.