Former Pakistan Premier Benazir Bhutto’s party on Thursday turned down the request of President Pervez Musharraf to delay her return home, insisting that she would come back to the country from her self-imposed exile on October 18 as scheduled.

Musharraf, in a TV interview aired on Wednesday asked Bhutto to put off her return till the Supreme Court rules on petitions challenging his candidature in the October 6 Presidential poll, which the General swept.

The apex court will begin hearing the matter on October 17, a day before Bhutto arrives in the southern Pakistani port city of Karachi.

“Benazir should not come back to Pakistan on October 18 and she should delay her return till the Supreme Court decision regarding the presidential election,” Musharraf, who last week promulgated an ordinance to provide amnesty to Bhutto in corruption cases that made her leave Pakistan in 1999, said in the interview

Meanwhile on Wednesday, Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz said the country will hold parliamentary elections in early January.

Aziz said that a caretaker government would be set up to organise the polls “in the beginning of January.” He did not specify a date.

On Thursday, Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) spokesman Farhatullah Babar said, “Benazir Bhutto will return as scheduled on October 18. Her plane will land at Karachi at 1 pm on that day. There is no change in her programme.”

The signing of the ordinance by Musharraf paved the way for Bhutto’s return to lead the PPP in the general elections scheduled for January next year.

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