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Benazir, Sharif will not return, says Musharraf

By B. Muralidhar Reddy

ISLAMABAD July 19. In what is seen as an effort to woo fence-sitters in the two main political parties, the Pakistan President, Pervez Musharraf, is reported to have told the factional Muslim League that the two former Prime Ministers, Benazir Bhutto and Nawaz Sharif, were neither returning home nor would be they allowed to participate in the elections.

Muhammad Azar, chief of the Pakistan Muslim League (Quaid-e-Azam), a splinter group of the Muslim League led by Mr. Sharif, quoted the Pakistan President as telling his group that all speculation about the return of the two former Prime Ministers was baseless. The PML group is nicknamed ``King's party'' for its proximity to the Musharraf regime.

Interestingly, Mr. Azar told reporters in Lahore on Thursday that there was no truth in the reports about the return of Shahbaz Sharif, brother of Mr. Nawaz Sharif and former Chief Minister of Punjab.

However, leaders of both the PPP and PML have asserted that their leaders were determined to play a role in the October elections. While the PPP insisted that Ms. Bhutto would return home at an ``appropriate time'', the PML said that Mr. Sharif would be the guiding force for the party at the hustings.Senior functionaries of the Musharraf regime have asserted in recent weeks that there was no way that any of the members of the Sharif family could return to Pakistan and take part in politics. According to them, Mr. Sharif and his family were allowed to go on exile to Saudi Arabia on the understanding that they would not dabble in Pakistani politics.Ms. Bhutto does not face any such impediment. She had left the country on her own in 1998, during Mr. Sharif's regime, after a lower court indicted her in a corruption case.

Senior members of the Government have said that if Ms. Bhutto were to return, she would be detained and sent to jail as she is convicted in more than one case and is facing charges in several other cases related to corruption and misuse of office.

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