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ISLAMABAD - Former Pakistan prime minister Nawaz Sharif returned from exile on Monday for a showdown with embattled President Pervez Musharraf, vowing to topple the military ruler who ousted him eight years ago.
He said he was coming home to provide "a final push to the crumbling dictatorship" of Musharraf, the army chief and key US ally who has watched his grip on power weaken after months of mass protests in the streets.
Sharif showed his defiance as soon as his flight from London touched down by refusing to hand over his passport to officials for nearly two hours, prompting policemen to board the plane until he finally agreed to come out.
Government officials said Sharif, 57, would initially be taken into protective custody and that a helicopter was waiting at the airport for him, although his long-term fate was unclear.
Baton-wielding police clashed with around 100 of Sharif's supporters and arrested key members of his party as he returned, while security forces threw up a five-kilometre (three-mile) security cordon around Islamabad airport.
Local television showed Pakistan International Airlines flight PK 786, the plane Sharif boarded in London on Sunday night, touching down and taxiing to the terminal building.
The two-time ex-prime minister shook people's hands after the plane touched down and his supporters on board chanted "Go, Musharraf! Go!" and "Long live Nawaz Sharif", a passenger on the aircraft told AFP.
Sharif remained inside the aircraft after his arrival.
"The officials asked him to cooperate for security reasons but he said that he could not give them his passport. He said that he himself wanted to walk to the counter," an airport official said. "He came out later along with police."
A top government official said that an officer from Pakistan's anti-graft body was waiting with warrants relating to alleged corruption.
"He will be taken into custody after competing legal formalities," the official said.
Analysts say the return of the man he drove from power in a 1999 bloodless coup could be the biggest challenge yet for Musharraf, and further destabilise a nuclear-armed Islamic republic already awash in political turmoil.
Angry demonstrations over his rule, the deadly siege of a militant mosque, the threat of Al-Qaeda and Taliban guerrillas and even criticism from close ally the United States have dogged Musharraf in recent months.
A combative Sharif, who rejected pleas to hold to the terms of his exile agreement and stay out of his homeland until 2010, said it was time for the president-in-uniform to go.
"I am returning to my country to give a final push to a crumbling dictatorship," he told Pakistan television from London before boarding his flight.
"I am going back to my country with the resolve to rid my motherland of problems and lawlessness it is plunged into because of the policies of one man -- General Pervez Musharraf," he said.
Sharif planned to lead a triumphal motorcade from the capital Islamabad to Lahore, his family's power base -- recreating a procession by the country's top
judge earlier this year when Musharraf tried to sack him.
After being ousted, Sharif was sentenced to life in prison for tax evasion and treason but was released in December 2000 on condition that he and his family live in exile in Saudi Arabia for 10 years.
But Pakistan's Supreme Court ruled last month that they could fly back.
The court has repeatedly proved to be a thorn in the side of the president since he tried to sack its chief judge, Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry, earlier this year.
That bid set off the protests which spiralled into a full-blown political crisis for Musharraf, who has lately been negotiating a power-sharing deal with another former prime minister, Benazir Bhutto, to try to stay in office.
Musharraf has also faced growing criticism from the United States, which has taken him to task over Taliban and Al-Qaeda militants operating on Pakistani soil and urging him to make good on pending elections. - AFP/ir
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