Bhutto’s Widow Reportedly Will End Exile, Return to Pakistan

Nusrat Bhutto, widow of former Pakistani Prime Minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, will end a European exile to campaign in the coming election campaign for her party, a party official said on Thursday.

Nusrat Bhutto formally heads her late husband’s Pakistan People’s Party, the country’s largest political group, which is led in her absence by her daughter, Benazir Bhutto, who is expecting a baby.

Party official Malik Hakmeen Khan, quoted by the Pakistan Press International news agency, said Nusrat Bhutto “will return home soon” for the campaign.

Hakmeen Khan, secretary general of the party’s Punjab provincial branch, said Nusrat’s younger daughter, Sanam, would also address election rallies with her mother.

President Mohammed Zia ul-Haq has set Nov. 16 for the general elections but has barred political parties from contesting the vote. However, the parties are allowed to back candidates who stand as individuals.

The Pakistan People’s Party and eight other opposition parties grouped in the Movement for the Restoration of Democracy alliance have decided to challenge Zia’s decision barring political parties before the Supreme Court.

Nusrat Bhutto, 54, left Pakistan in November, 1982, for treatment of lung cancer and has lived in self-exile in Western Europe since then.

She returned home only briefly to attend Benazir’s wedding last December, but she abstained from making any political statement or attending political meetings.

Zia toppled Zulfikar Ali Bhutto in a July, 1977, military coup and executed him in April, 1979, following Bhutto’s controversial conviction on a murder conspiracy charge.