LAHORE, Pakistan - Back in Pakistan from exile, former prime minister Nawaz Sharif was due to file nomination papers on Monday for polls in January but he may not take part unless President Pervez Musharraf ends emergency rule.
Sharif, ousted by Musharraf eight years ago, flew home on Sunday, saying he wanted to help end "dictatorship" in the country that army chief and U.S. ally Musharraf has ruled under emergency powers since November 3.
"General Musharraf has brought this country to the verge of disaster," Sharif told supporters early on Monday during a stop on his slow journey into Lahore from the city's airport where he had landed on a flight from Saudi Arabia.
"We have to save this country. We have to unite and get rid of dictatorship," he said by megaphone from the back of a truck, after a boisterous welcome from thousands of loyalists in his hometown.
Western governments fear Musharraf's emergency rule and moves to stifle democracy in Pakistan could give an advantage to Islamist militants threatening the nuclear-armed nation.
There have been more than 25 suicide attacks since Islamist militants intensified a campaign in July. The latest two killed 15 people in Rawalpindi, near Islamabad, on Saturday.
Musharraf is under pressure at home and abroad to roll back the emergency powers he invoked on November3. He has used them to purge the Supreme Court of judges he feared would annul his October 6 re-election by parliament.
Having now secured a second five-year term, thanks to a new panel of friendly judges, he is expected to quit as army chief and take the oath as a civilian president in the coming days.
Unpopular, politically isolated and desperate for support from the parliament that emerges from the January 8 poll, Musharraf now has to contend with two rivals he has spent much of the last eight years trying to marginalise and called corrupt.
He allowed Benazir Bhutto, another two-time former prime minister, to come back to Pakistan last month protected from old graft charges in the hope she would become a post-election ally.
PRICE OF GHEE
Relations between Musharraf and Bhutto soured almost at once when a suicide attack killed at least 139 at her homecoming parade on October 19.
