LONDON, Nov 28: Former prime ministers Benazir Bhutto and Nawaz Sharif, the first in self-exile and the second facing a 10-year entry ban into Pakistan, are likely to take their chances and return home immediately after the election schedule is announced.

Ms Bhutto who was talking to Dawn at the residence of former FIA chief-turned-business tycoon, Rehman Malik, before her dinner meeting with Mr Sharif on Monday evening seemed to have persuaded herself to believe that it would not be possible for Gen Musharraf to arrest her after he had announced the election schedule.

“If I go now, I will be arrested and they will not let me communicate with my people as freely and as regularly as I do now even from here,” she said.

Mr Sharif said he wanted to go back home ‘yesterday’, but thought he would meet the same fate as his brother. He, therefore, seems to be banking on the anticipated political mobilisation following the announcement of election schedule to take his chances. He was talking to Dawn at his office in London’s high–end shopping centre, Bond Street, on Monday morning.

Both Mr Sharif and Ms Bhutto seem to be regular gym visitors. Both were in high spirits and in excellent health. But they were totally different in the way they handled questions. Ms Bhutto like always played very close to her chest, giving nothing and refusing to be drawn into a candid dialogue. Her answers at times sounded disingenuous which she labelled as diplomatic. Mr Sharif was sincerity personified. He was open to the point that at times one had to ask if what he was saying was for the record.

Mr Sharif did not seem very enthusiastic about MMA’s threat to resign from parliament. For him the best time to resign was when Sardar Akbar Khan Bugti was killed in an encounter with the security forces.

Ms Bhutto also seemed not to favour the idea of resignation. She thought the best time to resign would be when and if Gen Musharraf tried to get himself re-elected from the present parliament.

In fact Ms Bhutto seemed opposed to any political activity that would degenerate into anarchy on the streets which she thought the regime would use as an excuse to postpone the elections and impose ‘emergency’.

Mr Sharif thinks that the time has come for all the opposition parties to gather on one platform and chalk out a strategy to snatch the political initiative from the military regime.

“My party is prepared to host an APC for the purpose here or in Dubai. And we can also discuss at this conference all options like resigning from parliament or boycotting the elections or making seat adjustments if we decide to participate in elections,” he said.

He said he was not at all interested in power at this point in time. His mission today appeared to be forcing the army back to the barracks and getting the 1973 Constitution restored in its original form, “it is democracy I am interested in, not power”.

Ms Bhutto reiterated her demand for an interim government made up of progressive and moderate political elements to oversee the elections. She also

demanded appropriate reforms in the election commission and its rules to ensure free and fair elections.The two reiterated that they were not discussing any deals with the Gen Musharraf regime.

“Twice in the past they offered me a deal which in effect had wanted me to accept everything that has happened since the military coup which I rejected,” Mr Sharif said.

She denied outrightly when it was suggested to Ms Bhutto that Gen Musharraf had talked to her twice on telephone in the presence of neutral witnesses, the first time it was a high-ranking US diplomat when she was in the US and the second time the US ambassador to Pakistan and the former UK High Commissioner to Pakistan were present in the Army House when the president talked to her.

It appears as if there is a deal, but there is as yet no done deal. Gen Musharraf’s friends in Washington and London are advising him to broaden his political base with progressive and moderate elements and at the same time friends of Ms Bhutto in the US and UK are understood to have given her guarantees that the next elections would be fair and free.

They are also understood to have asked Ms Bhutto in return of a guaranteed free and fair election to give them her firm word that in case the PPP won the majority it would help Gen Musharraf get re-elected for another term. It is not yet clear whether they are asking her to get him elected in uniform. So, as of today it appears as if the deal would be done only if Gen Musharraf holds free and fair elections.

When asked why she did not openly criticise the policies of Mr Bush as did some other frontline political leaders in Pakistan, she said she supported the war on terror and she was all for helping Mr Karzai to establish democracy in his country, and then she added with a twinkle in her eye: “I am only against his (Bush’s) policy of supporting a military dictatorship in Pakistan.”

Mr Sharif made no bones about what he thought of Mr Bush and his policies and said the mid-term elections in the US had weakened the US president and that he thought had also enfeebled General Musharraf.

Both Ms Bhutto and Mr Sharif said they could handle the threat of terror much better than the military regime and could defeat terrorism with the support of popular will.

Ms Bhutto said she had handled such situations in the past, “remember how we tackled the situation in Karachi? And then we were about to be declared a terrorist state when I took over for the second time and we coped with the situation successfully.”

Mr Sharif said Gen Musharraf was not winning the war on terror because he was fighting it all alone. “We represent the people of Pakistan – the PML (N) and the PPP — he has forcibly kept the two out of the political reckoning in the country for the last five years, so how can he win this war on his own?”

Ms Bhutto vehemently disagreed when told that her party as of today seemingly had no significant political presence in the country and that so far the PPP has not been able to hold a single public meeting of any significance anywhere in the country.She recalled that despite her absence her party had polled the largest number of votes in the 2002 elections and that it would repeat the performance come elections.

Shah Mehmood Qureshi and Qasim Zia, the present and former chiefs of Punjab PPP, who were present on the occasion intervened at this point and said the party had held the biggest public meeting so far on Nov 15 and it also had plans to hold several such meetings in the coming weeks.

Mr Sharif was, however, more realistic and said that they could not hold any meeting so far without first getting the permission from the local administration, but he thought in the coming weeks and months things will change for the better on this front.