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Former Pakistan PM Bhutto may return

Former Pakistani prime minister Benazir Bhutto could return to the country as early as September amid speculation that she may make a deal with President Pervez Musharraf, she said yesterday.

Bhutto, in exile because of corruption claims against her, told London's Sunday Times that she would only consider an agreement with Musharraf if she felt it necessary to guarantee fair and timely parliamentary elections.

"I said I would return by December, but now my people tell me we should go to court in regard to my return, and that I should come back as soon as possible, maybe in September," the Pakistan People's Party chairman said.

"We will decide at a party meeting at the end of August," she said.

But she said she felt "safer about returning" after Pakistan's Supreme Court overturned the suspension of the country's top judge, Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry.

In an interview from London, Bhutto, who was twice premier in the 1990s, told the paper that a deal with Musharraf would be "very unpopular" and could lose votes for her party.

The military leader is battling instability over Chaudhry's suspension and the storming of the militant Red Mosque in Islamabad earlier this month.
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