DUBAI: Gearing up for a triumphant return to Pakistan after eight years in exile, the former Pakistan Prime Minister, Benazir Bhutto, on Wednesday said she was heading home on a mission to revive democracy, forge unity and engender prosperity.
Ms. Bhutto told a press conference that she would leave for Karachi from Dubai on Thursday morning.
Loyalists of the Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) and other supporters are assembling at the airport here to give Ms. Bhutto a fitting send-off.
Party workers said that at least a million people were expected to receive Ms. Bhutto in Karachi.
Asked by a Pakistani correspondent whether she could compare her re-entry into Pakistan to the return from exile to Iran by Ayatollah Khomeini in 1979, Ms. Bhutto said that she saw herself as the harbinger of employment and prosperity for ordinary Pakistanis. She said the growing threat from terrorism, declining living standards and trouble in some border areas meant she could no longer delay her return.
PTI reports:
Ms. Bhutto told NDTV that intelligence reports suggested that underworld don Dawood Ibrahim was in Pakistan. “I have heard that he [Dawood] is there. I know that there are intelligence reports stating that he is there.” She said if a PPP government came to power, it would extradite to India Dawood, the prime accused in the 1993 Mumbai serial blasts case.
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