Former Pakistani prime minister Benazir Bhutto made a dramatic return to Pakistan yesterday, greeting tens of thousands of cheering supporters amid massive security and launching what she hopes will be a stunning political comeback after eight years of exile.
Bhutto wept as she emerged from a plane that brought her from Dubai to Karachi. At the airport, she climbed aboard the roof of a truck and began a triumphant procession through Pakistan's largest city.
Asked at the airport how it felt to be home, Bhutto said it felt "good. Very good."
Bhutto, a two-time prime minister who fled Pakistan in the face of corruption charges in 1999, has returned to a nation struggling to counter spreading Islamic militancy.
With parliamentary elections due in January, she hopes to campaign for a third premiership. However, analysts say she has risked her popularity by compromising with unpopular military ruler, Pakistani President General Pervez Musharraf.
Authorities deployed security forces to protect the leader of the secular, liberal Pakistan's People Party from possible attack by Islamic radicals. But the precautions failed to deter her party from mounting a spirited street party.
Hundreds of buses had converged on Karachi overnight, disgorging crowds of supporters.
Groups of men banged on drums, shook maracas and performed traditional dances along her planned route to the tomb of Pakistan's founding father, Mohammed Ali Jinnah, where she planned to make a speech.
Crowds chanted "Prime minister Benazir!" and waved her party's red, black and green flags as her truck inched through the crowd.
Bhutto, squeezed between other party bigwigs at the front of the truck rather than in a bulletproof cubicle toward the rear, waved and smiled.
Bhutto paved her route back in negotiations with Musharraf, who seized power in a 1999 coup. Musharraf is promising to give up his command of Pakistan's army if he secures a new term as president.
The talks have yielded an amnesty covering the corruption cases that made Bhutto leave Pakistan in the first place, and could see the archrivals eventually team up to fight al-Qaeda and the Taliban.
Before boarding her flight from Dubai, Bhutto told reporters her homecoming felt like a miracle.
"I hope that, as this miracle is happening, that a miracle will happen for the impoverished and poverty-stricken people of Pakistan who are desperate for change, who want safety, who want security, who want opportunity, who want empowerment and employment," she said.
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