NEW DELHI, 2 April 2005 — Pakistan’s self-exiled former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto yesterday said she hoped to return to the country soon “after the return of democracy”.
“On our part we are trying our best to find ways as to how to speed up the process of return of democracy in Pakistan,” Benazir told reporters on her arrival in Jaipur, capital of Indian state of Rajasthan.
Meanwhile, she said she hoped to be able to return to Pakistan “soon after the return of democracy.”
However Benazir ruled out any agitation against Musharraf’s rule. “In the present international scenario we are not thinking in these terms,” she said.
Bhutto, who governed Pakistan twice between 1988 and 1996, was accompanied by her husband Asif Ali Zardari, who was released from eight years imprisonment in Pakistan last June on charges of murder and corruption.
There were confused statements yesterday over whether Benazir, who is living in Dubai to avoid graft charges in her home country, had held a meeting with Musharraf recently.
“We had a fruitful meeting with President Pervez Musharraf recently over the issue of restoration of democracy in Pakistan and we hope that process would be speeded up,” Benazir was quoted as saying by the Press Trust of India new agency.
In Islamabad, a spokesman for Benazir’s Pakistan People’s Party, however, denied there had been a meeting between the two.
“This is a misquotation and although I am not aware of what exactly she said I wish to clarify that no meeting of Benazir Bhutto with President Pervez Musharraf has taken place ever since the general usurped power and dismissed an elected government,” the spokesman said.
Musharraf has held the posts of Pakistan president and army chief since seizing power in a bloodless coup in 1999 from the democratically elected government of Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif.
Last year, he pushed through a new law in Parliament enabling him to continue as military chief despite earlier pledging to relinquish his dual post.
On talks with India, Benazir said the dialogue would be more meaningful if Islamabad was represented by “elected” leaders.
