Ex-PM Sharif leaves after return to Pakistan

Bhutto offers neutral stance
Not everyone condemned the departure. The opposition party led by Benazir Bhutto, another exiled former prime minister with ambitions to return for parliamentary elections, adopted a neutral stance.

Her Pakistan People’s Party said the Supreme Court “rightly ruled” that Sharif had a right to return home, but added that his reported 1999 agreement to avoid corruption charges by going into exile for a decade was a matter between him, those who helped broker the deal and Pakistan’s courts.

Sharif’s renewed exile could help clear the way for Bhutto and Musharraf to reach a power-sharing agreement.

Musharraf wants her party’s support to help him secure a new five-year presidential term when parliament elects a leader by mid-October. Bhutto wants corruption charges against her dropped and a chance to become prime minister for a third time after parliamentary elections due by mid-January.

Bhutto could face public criticism and dissent within her party if she teamed with Musharraf.

Musharraf and Bhutto “might think the path is now clear for them, but the longer term ramifications are going to be a new political polarization and doubts about the fairness of the electoral process,” said Rais, the political scientist in Lahore.

Other leaders under house arrest
At least four senior opposition leaders were under house arrest, among several hundred political party activists rounded up recently, officials said.

They included the head of an political alliance that supports Sharif, Qazi Hussain Ahmed; another hard-line Islamic lawmaker, Liaqat Baluch; the acting president of Sharif’s party, Javed Hashmi; and party chairman Raja Zafarul Haq, party and government officials said.

Sharif, the son of a wealthy industrialist, appointed Musharraf to the post of military chief in 1998, but his attempt to fire the general a year later triggered the coup that put Musharraf in power.

Accused of denying landing rights to a plane carrying Musharraf that was short on fuel, Sharif was jailed but later released and sent to Saudi Arabia after allegedly pledging not to return for a decade.

The government has accused Musharraf of reneging on the deal, which was reached with the assent of the Saudi government. The Saudi intelligence chief said Saturday in Islamabad that Sharif should respect the accord.

Sharif arrives in Saudi Arabia
When Sharif arrived early Monday on a Pakistan International Airlines flight from London, his jetliner was surrounded by black-uniformed commandos.

He was taken to the airport’s VIP lounge, where a senior investigator from Pakistan’s anti-corruption body accompanied by police officers served an arrest warrant.

The investigator, Azhar Mahmood Qazi, said Sharif was being arrested on money-laundering and corruption charges stemming from a sugar mill business several years ago. Sharif was accused of laundering $21.2 million, he said.

Soon after, Sharif was put on a flight to Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, and witnesses said he left that airport in a motorcade with sirens blaring.

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