ISLAMABAD, Sept 13: Former president Gen (retd) Pervez Musharraf, who has announced his intentions to return to the country soon, will formally launch his political party, the All Pakistan Muslim League (APML), and unveil its political programme in London on Oct 1.

“Gen Sahib will start his political journey at a press conference on Oct 1,” Barrister Saif, a spokesman for the former president, told Dawn on Monday.

The former military ruler claimed that he could become the president once again and told a private TV channel that he would contest the general elections in 2013.

His spokesman claimed that a number of prominent politicians were with the former president and many others had promised to join him soon. “We started a membership campaign in March and the number of our members has crossed 200,000.”

Musharraf admitted that his popularity had waned but said he still enjoyed strong support among most of the Pakistanis who did not vote.

The 67-year-old former president said he was not scared of possible cases against him and insisted that he had to try to lift Pakistan out of its “pathetic situation”.

And his spokesman said: “Cases made against Gen Musharraf are so weak that they cannot be pursued by the complainants in the courts of law. One case registered at a police station in Islamabad was lodged by a lawyer for keeping Supreme Court's judges in house arrest and the second was filed for killing Nawab Akbar Bugti.

“The former president has nothing to do with the detention of judges because it was an administrative matter and in the second case Nawab Bugti was killed in a military operation in which some army personnel died too. Both the cases are bailable, even then Prevez Musharraf is ready to face imprisonment,” he said.

“Two hundred per cent I will participate in the next election, standing for myself, standing for a party that I'll create,” Musharraf said on Friday in London, where he lives.

He said he would launch the new party “in the very near future” but would not return home for the moment.

Commenting on Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani's statement that Musharraf would be welcomed by Chief Justice Iftikhar Mohammad Chaudhry if he returned to the country, Barrister Saif termed the statement a contempt of court and a bid to make the chief justice a party to the issue. “It is a foolish statement of an incompetent prime minister,” he said.

When asked why the Election Commission had not yet registered the APML, he said he had filed an application for registration in March and later fulfilled all the requirements of the commission by submitting the required documents.

“After the passage of 18th Amendment, the ECP has technically become defunct and thus it cannot register any party, but we have asked the commission to provisionally register our party till the commission comes into place,” he said. AFP adds:

Musharraf, 67, told the BBC: “The only certainty is that I will go back before the next elections.”

“I do intend creating a new party because I think the time has come in Pakistan when we need to introduce a new political culture: a culture which can take Pakistan forward on a correct democratic path, not on an artificial, make-believe democratic path.”

Asked if he was confident of becoming the next president, he replied: “No, I can't be assured, I can't be confident, but I believe there is a good chance of my winning on the political scene.

“I haven't decided whether I'm going to be president or anything, but however, winning first of all in the next election is the issue. There is a good chance.

“First of all you should have a party which wins in the elections.

“I did very well for Pakistan, I know that.

“We did wonders for them in those seven years, which should be compared with the 50 years of the past.”