‘Sharif to be deported to UK or Saudi Arabia if he returns’

The government wanted to ensure that Sharif was not provided an opportunity to become a hero in a day, he said. However, some reports here also said the government planned to divert to Quetta, the capital of Balochistan, the plane bringing Sharif and his brother Shahbaz to Islamabad.

The Sharifs have also turned down a plea by Saad Hariri, son of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafiq Hariri, to delay their return to Pakistan and pledged to come back on Monday as scheduled, according to a close aide of the deposed premier.

Sharif and his brother told Saad Hariri, presumably an emissary of Saudi Arabia, during a meeting in London two days back that they would return home on Monday, Dawn quoted Pervez Rashid, Sharif’s aide, as saying.

Saudi Arabia, which negotiated the Sharifs’ exile with Musharraf in 2000 and later provided them asylum in Jeddah, has already expressed unhappiness over their plans to return.

As an alternative, Hariri proposed that “Shahbaz could return home as planned on September 10 but Nawaz Sharif should follow him after the presidential elections,” Pervez Rashid was quoted by the daily as saying. “But, Sharif has vowed to return to his home country, come what may.”

When asked why the Sharifs’ PML-N party was keeping the name of the airline by which they would come back and its timing a secret, he said that under normal circumstances it would have made a public announcement well in advance.