LONDON, May 20: Former prime ministers Benazir Bhutto and Nawaz Sharif are keeping up their media pressure on President Pervez Musharraf as both have once again thrown a challenge to him through separate interviews, saying that they would go back home come what may and advising Gen Musharraf to abdicate peacefully.

In an interview to Sunday Telegraph, Ms Bhutto asserted that neither the international community nor the armed forces would continue to back the present regime “if domestic protests continue to escalate”.

She alleged that Gen Musharraf had lost the confidence of his fellow army officers.

She said: “The only option for Gen Musharraf and his regime is to seek a political solution through a negotiated transfer of power.”

Speaking hours after Gen Musharraf had insisted that she would not be allowed to return to the country for November’s planned elections, Ms Bhutto said: “No matter what, I’m going back this year.”

She warned that Gen Musharraf was running a ‘dictatorship’ that could now end either peacefully or in all-out bloodshed.

When asked about talks with Gen Musharraf, Ms Bhutto replied: “It is inappropriate to talk of back-channel contacts against the background of the Karachi killings.”

Ms Bhutto said Gen Musharraf had allowed ‘the shadow of extremism’ to fall on Pakistan and that fundamentalist seminaries had stepped in where the state had failed.

“The political madressas exploit the neglect of governance, offering food, clothing, shelter and education to the children of the poor. They then brainwash these students and use them as fodder in their grand design to dismantle the state by infiltrating key institutions, establishing terror groups and establishing a parallel state structure,” she said.

Mr Sharif told the newspaper that he too was planning to return to Pakistan.

“The iron is hot, but after a few weeks or months it will start melting and I will go when it starts melting,” he said. “He can put the handcuffs [on me] if he wants -- he put me in jail for 14 months earlier.”

Parliamentary democracy, which had been reduced to ‘rubber stamping’ Gen Musharraf’s decrees, needed to be restored, he said, warning that the president might attempt to rig November’s elections. “He cannot afford free and fair polls because he cannot survive them.”

Ms Bhutto, however, said rigged elections would fail. “All political parties will unite and the protests will increase,” she said. “The Orange Revolution in Ukraine is a good example of how people who are robbed of their right to vote can protest and put an end to dictatorship.”

In the same newspaper, an article by Niall Ferguson says the future of Gen Musharraf hangs in the balance.

The piece links the fate of Paul Wolfowitz, Tony Blair, Gen Musharraf and a couple of other world leaders with that of United Stets President George Bush, who, he thinks, is on the brink of a Shakespearean tragedy.

Mr Ferguson says: “Eight days ago, 40 people died in rioting in Karachi, apparently as a result of attempts by pro-government forces to discourage a rally by disgruntled lawyers, who have been incensed by Musharraf’s decision to oust the head of the Supreme Court.

“After eight years of his military dictatorship, Pakistan’s democratic forces are stirring. But watch out: these include the Islamist coalition known as the Muttahida Majlis-i-Amal. And the recent violence also has an ethnic dimension, pitting Muhajirs against Pashtuns.”