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Islamabad: Pakistan Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz said yesterday former prime ministers Benazir Bhutto and Nawaz Sharif may be constitutionally barred from contesting elections if they returned from exile, helping the military-backed government stay in power.
"There are legal complications and it will be up to them to decide what their future ought to be," Aziz, 58, said in an interview with the American television channel Bloomberg.
"It will be better for Pakistan that they come back after the elections so that the current environment doesn't get destabilised."
Aziz said that Benazir Bhutto's demands require changes in the constitution that cannot be the subject of political arrangement.
"There are several court cases pending against her and the discussions have been on finding a way out on settling these issues through the legal process," the Pakistani premier added.
Willingness
Aziz, who ends his term in November, said he may seek a second five-year stint after parliamentary elections due by mid-January. Under Aziz, record foreign investment has helped lift the stock market to an all-time high and economic growth to an average 7.5 per cent in the past four years.
"If my party decides that I should be the person, I'll be willing to serve," said Aziz. "I'll be going into the elections to contest for the National Assembly because we have shown to the people that this is the first time that we have shown such sustainable growth," he claimed.
Aziz, who was appointed finance minister by Presidnet Pervez Musharraf in 1999 to help turn around an economy that had barely one month of foreign exchange reserves, was elected prime minister by parliament in 2004.
Since then, he has had to win back overseas investors, who had avoided the nation after the September 11 attacks made Pakistan's border with Afghanistan a focus of the US fight against the Al Qaida terrorist network. "We will leave it to Musharraf to decide when he wants to" quit as the army chief, Aziz said.
"The current law allows him be the president and the army chief until the end of this year. He will not do anything that will violate the constitution or law. It's a unique arrangement but that's what the law is."
Potential
"Pakistan is a country which has transformed, which is recognised today as having a lot of potential," Aziz said. The size of the economy has doubled and foreign currency reserves have reached a record $16 billion (Dh60 billion), he said.
Commenting on Iran-Pakistan-India gas pipeline, Aziz said, the project is now at an advanced stage of negotiations and we are confident that this project will be launched in the near future. Similarly, we are exploring the possibilities of a pipeline from Turkmenistan to Pakistan through Afghanistan, which could be extended onward to India, Aziz said.
"Import of LNG from the Gulf countries is also a growing option for Pakistan as well as for countries in our region," he added.
"Pakistan is also engaged in negotiations for import of electricity through high voltage transmission links from Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan through Afghanistan," he said.
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