WASHINGTON, Jan 27: Former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto has said that she is ready to appear before any court in Pakistan to face the charges brought against her by the government.

Ms Bhutto, who has dismissed Interpol’s so-called red notices as part of a political campaign against her by President Pervez Musharraf, told an audience at Voice of America on Thursday that her lawyers were seeking details of these notices, which she said she learned of through the press.

Ms Bhutto, who has lived in exile since 1999, said: “As far as I’m concerned, if any court wants me in Pakistan, I’m prepared to catch the next plane and go to Pakistan.”

She said it was wrong to say that she was evading presence in a court. “No court in Pakistan to my knowledge has asked me to be present. And I believe that Interpol has not been given the correct facts by the military regime in Pakistan.”

She said she was not afraid of the government’s threats to arrest her. “My husband and I have faced these scurrilous, baseless, malicious, and politically-motivated charges for the past nine years,” she said. “And by the grace of God, there’s not a single conviction against either my husband or myself for fraud or for corruption.”

Interpol, the international police agency, issued the notices against Ms Bhutto and her husband Asif Ali Zardari on Thursday. An Interpol spokesman said the red notices are not arrest warrants, as is commonly thought. However, the spokesman said many of Interpol’s member countries consider a red notice a valid request for provisional arrest, especially if they are linked to the requesting country via a bilateral extradition treaty.

A US Justice Department official would not comment on the matter. Akram Shaheedi, a spokesman for the Pakistani Embassy in Washington, said Islamabad has not asked the US State Department for any action regarding the notices.

Mr Zardari said he had been in the United States for several months for medical treatment related to his long imprisonment.