LONDON/WASHINGTON, April 28: Former prime minister and PPP chairperson Benazir Bhutto has said that she is prepared to work with President Pervez Musharraf and is looking forward to returning home before the general election.

Attempting perhaps to put at rest speculations that she has done a deal with President Musharraf, Ms Bhutto insisted in interviews with a British and an American newspaper that the ‘back channel’ contacts with Gen Musharraf had so far `not led to any understanding’.

“Failure to reach an understanding with Gen Musharraf could mean false charges leading to her arrest, but it is a risk she is willing to take,” she told The Times of London and The Washington Times in interviews in Dubai. The interviews were published on Saturday.

“And so all this talk of an ‘understanding’ I find very confusing,” Ms Bhutto said in the The Times of London interview.

With one confusion out of the way, Ms Bhutto gave rise to a new one, telling the paper that she was prepared to work with

President Musharraf.

But the terms set by her for this arrangement to become a reality appear rather impossible for the president to accept because as of today he does not seem all that eager to give up his uniform in a hurry or bring about a balance in the powers between the offices of the president and the prime minister.

And perhaps to reassure PML-N chief Nawaz Sharif, she referred to the Charter of Democracy.

“And for that we are calling for a robust international monitoring team to ensure that these elections are fair and free because obviously if they’re not, the ruling party will still be in the driver’s seat and the creeping Talibanisation of Pakistan will continue,” she remarked.

But then enigmatically in the next breath she says something that is anathema to Mr Nawaz -- `a good working relationship between Gen Musharraf and me is a necessity for Pakistan’.

Compounding the confusion further, she adds that `it is premature to talk about working with President Musharraf at this stage’ because, according to her, the ruling party has said `we can rig the election’.

Ms Bhutto said: “Democracy can work in Pakistan if the West stops propping up military dictatorships. Our tragedy has been that the military has been able to exploit the West’s strategic interest in Afghanistan for almost two decades.”

According to Ms Bhutto, President Musharraf, far from being weak, was strategically catering for the extremists in order to convince the US that unless they continued to back him, their worst fears would be realised.

She says: “The indications are that he is confident he has the support of the White House and that because of the Iran stand-off with the West, he feels that he will continue to be a key ally.”

“Had my government remained in power, most of the world’s terrorist tragedies would not have occurred -– since the trail so often leads back to Pakistan,” she adds.

RETURN TO PAKISTAN: In the Washington Times interview, Ms Bhutto said she was eager to return to Pakistan this year irrespective of whether there’s an understanding or not. “I realise that absent an understanding, I run the risk of being arrested on fallacious charges. I plan to take on the challenges, knowing my life is dedicated to the restoration of democracy.”