Pakistan's Musharraf: Exiled Bhutto Not Returning

Pakistan's president said Sunday that there was no deal in the works with his main political opposition, denying speculation that former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto could return from exile.
President Gen. Pervez Musharraf's statement followed media reports and recent comments by a Cabinet minister suggesting that relations may be thawing between Musharraf and Bhutto.
"A spokesman for the president has strongly refuted all speculations regarding change in the government and a deal with an opposition party," an official statement from Musharraf's office said.
The government recently shifted a veteran anti-corruption investigator from cases against Bhutto, who lives in exile but still leads the Pakistan People's Party, the country's largest anti-Musharraf political group.
The transfer of the corruption investigator fanned speculation that Musharraf may sanction Bhutto's return to Pakistan. Railways Minister Sheikh Rashid Ahmed, a staunch Musharraf supporter, said Thursday that the move was part of negotiations between the government and Bhutto's party aimed at an unspecified possible deal.
Musharraf has been weakened by a bitter fight with opposition groups, including those led by Bhutto and another former prime minister Nawaz Sharif, over his removal of a senior judge.
Musharraf, who toppled Sharif's elected government and seized power in a bloodless coup in 1999, has said in the past that both Sharif and Bhutto, who was elected prime minister in the 1980s and 1990s, have no further role to play in Pakistani politics.
Courtesy: NM