Bhutto, Sharif will not contest polls: Musharraf

As Pakistani opposition mounts efforts to form a grand alliance against the government after Eid, President General Pervez Musharraf on Sunday night said ex-prime ministers Benazir Bhutto and Nawaz Sharif will not be allowed to contest the 2007 parliamentary elections.

''They [Bhutto and Sharif] will not be allowed to contest the 2007 parliamentary elections,'' General Musharraf said during an interview with the private Geo TV.

He said Bhutto faced several cases in Pakistani courts, which could not be decided in absentia while Sharif went into exile for ten years under his own will in 2000.

Sharif settled in Saudi Arabia in December 2000 under a deal between the royal Saudi and Pakistani governments a year after he was overthrown in a military coup in October 1999.

However, Musharraf said Bhutto's Pakistan Peoples Party and Sharif's Pakistan Muslim League (N) would be there to contest.