JEDDAH, 10 February 2005 — Former Pakistani Prime Ministers Benazir Bhutto and Nawaz Sharif are expected to hold major political discussions during the weekend in Jeddah. Benazir arrived here from Dubai yesterday on a three-day visit during which she will perform Umrah and pray at the Prophet’s Mosque in Madinah.

“I will offer condolences to Nawaz Sharif on his father’s death and then take up from there,” Benazir told Arab News on arrival.

Benazir is accompanied by her husband Asif Zardari. Benazir had specially summoned Pakistan People’s Party Parliamentarians’ President Makhdoom Amin Fahim from Pakistan to Dubai for consultations prior to her departure to Saudi Arabia, it was learned.

According to Pakistani observers, the two former leaders will discuss the means to strengthen cooperation between Sharif’s Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) and Benazir’s Pakistan People’s Party (PPP). It will be their first meeting since Sharif went into exile in December 2000 and Benazir’s self-imposed exile in 1998.

The Sharif-Benazir talks are expected to center around ways to invigorate the Alliance for Restoration of Democracy (ARD), of which their parties are major components, sources said.

They will also deliberate on the extent of ARD’s cooperation with the Muttahida Majlis-e-Amal (MMA) that seems to be holding back because the PPP wants to maintain a convenient distance from the religious parties.

Sources disclosed the former premiers will seek to give a direction to their future political relations and to evolve a strategy against Pakistan’s ruling alliance.

Zardari, a former senator, was freed on bail in December after eight years in prison on corruption charges still pending against him. He was jailed in 1996 after Benazir’s last government was dismissed for alleged corruption and misrule.

After his release, he traveled to Dubai to meet with his wife and children. PPP activists stated that Zardari has accused senior police officers and a top former anti-corruption official of torturing him while he was in custody six years ago.

Police in Pakistan yesterday registered cases against the accused, and said they would arrest them if a court issued warrants against them.