Former Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif has bowed to pressure from Saudia Arabia and the US to defer his return to Pakistan from exile till November 7, a media report said.
ISLAMABAD: Former Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif has bowed to pressure from Saudia Arabia and the US to defer his return to Pakistan from exile till November 7, a media report said on Sunday.
Sharif, who was deported to Saudi Arabia barely hours after he flew into Islamabad after seven years in exile on September 10, has given his word that he will not leave Saudi Arabia till November 7 and asked Pakistani and Saudi officials not to compel him to defer his homecoming any longer, The News reported.
The daily said Saad Hariri, the son of assassinated Lebanese prime minister Rafik Hariri and Prince Bandar bin Sultan of Saudi Arabia, convinced Sharif in Jeddah on October 17 to put off his return to Pakistan.
It quoted sources in the Pakistan High Commission in London as saying that Sharif "had no option" but to bow to pressure from Saudi Arabia and the US, mounted on behalf of President Pervez Musharraf.
Pakistan's Supreme Court, which had said that Sharif is free to return to the country, is currently hearing a contempt petition filed by his PML-N party after he was deported to Saudi Arabia last month.
Hariri played a "key role" in finalising an understanding between the Sharif family and Pakistan's military regime in 2000 and is believed to be very close to Musharraf, the report said.
While visiting Sharif in Jeddah on Tuesday, he was accompanied by Prince Bandar, the former Saudi ambassador to the US. They asked Sharif to postpone his plan to leave Saudi Arabia for two to three weeks.
Sharif said that before Eid, Prince Saud Al-Faisal, the foreign minister of Saudi Arabia, had visited him twice and assured him that he would be free to move anywhere after the festival and that the Saudi government had officially conveyed the same to the Pakistan government, the report said.
Hariri and the prince continued convincing Sharif till the early hours of the next days and finally succeeded in obtaining his word that he would not leave Jeddah till the end of the first week of November, it said.
Sharif, in turn, was assured by them that they would not ask him again to delay his return, the report said.
It also said Musharraf had asked the Saudi government to keep Sharif till the completion of Pakistan's general election, due by mid-January, but this was turned down. The military ruler then sought the intervention of the US, the report said.
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