PAKISTAN:The former Pakistani prime minister, Benazir Bhutto, said yesterday she would return home on October 18th, ending eight years of exile and adding a fresh frisson to the country's turbulent political scene.
At a rowdy Islamabad press conference, Bhutto officials struggled to be heard over fireworks as supporters threw rose petals and chanted "Long live Bhutto! Prime minister Benazir!"
The government said it would not deport Ms Bhutto on arrival, as it did the other exiled premier Nawaz Sharif last Monday, but may prosecute her under long-standing corruption charges.
The clock is ticking for president Pervez Musharraf, who is seeking re-election by the current parliament before October 15th.
He has enough votes, but his US and British allies want him to broaden his support through a powersharing deal with Ms Bhutto. The talks, however, have run aground and both sides are pessimistic.
Gen Musharraf's other headache is swelling Islamist violence. A suicide bomber drove a vehicle laden with explosives into a high-security military building on Thursday, killing 16 commandos from a unit that took part in July's Red Mosque siege, in which over 100 people died.
Ms Bhutto has large rural support, but the talks with Gen Musharraf are hitting her popularity in urban areas and the media. She wants him to resign as army chief and weaken the powers of the presidency.
The general holds two cards - a constitutional bar on anyone serving three times as prime minister (she has served twice) and a blizzard of corruption charges that helped topple her government in 1996 and caused her to flee Pakistan in 1999.
During Ms Bhutto's second term of office, her husband, Asif Zardari, acquired the nickname "Mr Ten Per Cent".
In 2004 he was the listed owner of a £4.35 million (€6.3m), 365-acre estate in Surrey, England, that Pakistani authorities said was bought with the proceeds of corruption.
But corruption charges are a tool of politics in Pakistan, employed by all sides. Ms Bhutto points out that she has never been found guilty in a court.
On arrival in Pakistan Ms Bhutto plans to go straight to the tomb of Pakistan's founding father, Muhammad Ali Jinnah. A former aide said the symbolism was that she was coming "to save the federation"