Bhutto, Sharif may be barred from polls: Aziz

Opposition leaders Benazir Bhutto and Nawaz Sharif may be constitutionally barred from contesting elections if they return from exile, Pakistan Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz has said.

"There are legal complications and it will be up to them to decide what their future ought to be," Aziz, 58, said in an interview in Islamabad yesterday.

"It will be better for Pakistan that they come back after the elections so that the current environment doesn't get destabilised," he said.

Sharif has said he will return to Pakistan this month to try to stop President Pervez Musharraf from standing for re-election while also serving as Army chief. Bhutto has said she will announce the date of her return on September 14. Barring the leaders, who alternated in power four times in the decade before 1999, from the polls may help Musharraf tighten his grip on the military and Parliament.

Bhutto, 54, who leads the largest opposition Pakistan People's Party, said on September 1 that talks with Musharraf on a power-sharing agreement had stalled.

Bhutto, prime minister from 1988 to 1990 and 1993 to 1996, has lived in self-imposed exile in London and Dubai since 1999, after being accused of corruption in Pakistan and has cases pending in the courts. Under the Constitution, Bhutto and Sharif are prohibited from serving as prime minister for a third time and can't stand for election if they've been convicted for offences that carry a jail term.

"Bhutto's demands "require changes in the Constitution that cannot be the subject of political arrangement," Aziz said. "There are several court cases pending against her and the discussions have been on finding a way out on settling these issues through the legal process," he added.

Sharif said in London last month he would return on September 10 following an August 23 ruling by the country's Supreme Court. The chief government lawyer, Malik Muhammad Qayyum, said the president could revoke Sharif's pardon and he might be arrested on arrival. The government had earlier said the judgment would be respected.

Aziz, who ends his term in November, said he might seek a second five-year stint after parliamentary elections due by mid-January. Under Aziz, record foreign investment has helped lift the stock market to an all-time high and economic growth to an average 7.5 percent in the past four years.

"If my party decides that I should be the person, I'll be willing to serve," said Aziz, a former global head of private banking and executive vice-president at New York-based Citibank NA.

"I'll be going into the elections to contest for the National Assembly because we have shown to the people that this is the first time that we have shown such sustainable growth."

His Pakistan Muslim League-Quaid-i-Azam would be successful in the parliamentary polls and would form the next government, the prime minister said.

Aziz, who was appointed finance minister by Musharraf in 1999 to help turn around an economy that had barely one month of foreign exchange reserves, was elected prime minister by Parliament in 2004.

Since then, he has had to win back overseas investors, who had avoided the nation after the September 11 attacks made Pakistan's border with Afghanistan a focus of the U.S. fight against the al- Qaeda terrorist network.