Former Pakistan prime minister Benazir Bhutto will end her exile and lead her party to victory in the country's next general election, her husband Asif Ali Zardari said here Monday, Online news agency reports.
"She is surely coming and will lead the Pakistan People's Party (PPP) in the next general election," Zardari told reporters at his seaside Bilawal House residence in this southern port city.
"I can't give you the date, but she will be here for the next elections," he said, insisting election would be held in Pakistan by 2005.
"Bhutto will create history by becoming the premier for the third time."
Zardari, who spent eight years in jail, was released last week after the Supreme Court granted him bail in the last of 17 cases of graft, murder and drug smuggling.
"Bhutto has a role to play in Pakistani politics and the vote bank belongs to her," he said.
Bhutto, who governed Pakistan twice -- from 1988 to 1990 and 1993 to 1996 - in self-exile in London and Dubai.
She left Pakistan in April 1998 and was convicted in absentia of corruption and other charges, which she rejected as being politically motivated to keep her away from the last polls held in 2002.
The government has said the present parliament will complete its five-year tenure that ends in 2007.
Zardari rejected speculation his release was linked to any deal with the government. "I rejected all (such) offers and preferred prison," he said.
"Democracy is our shield and we cannot compromise with authoritarian rulers," he said.
He said successive authoritarian governments painted his "villainous image" to malign Bhutto.
On the possibility of accepting President Pervez Musharraf as both president and army chief, Zardari said: "Democracy and authoritarian rule can't go together.
"He (Musharraf) can contest fresh presidential elections, but not as a general. It goes without saying."
Zardari was first arrested in 1990 when Bhutto's political foe Nawaz Sharif of the rival Pakistan Muslim League was prime minister. He spent 28 months in prison, facing criminal and corruption charges.
As minister and senator he was at the helm of affairs until Bhutto's second government was dismissed by then president Farooq Leghari in 1996. Analysts believe his release after numerous trials could herald political reconciliation in Pakistan.
It could also ease political tensions over Musharraf to relinquish his post as army chief by the yearend.
Opposition parties and democracy activists are bent on forcing Musharraf, who seized power in a bloodless coup in 1999 and has held the dual posts of president and army chief since June 2001, to shed his uniform and become a civilian president.
--Indo-Asian News Service