PAKISTAN’S two most popular politicians, Benazir Bhutto and Nawaz Sharif, both former prime ministers, will meet tomorrow to forge an alliance to sweep Pervez Musharraf from power.

Their meeting will take place just days after Musharraf stood down as military ruler and pledged to end the emergency rule that he introduced last month. He was sworn in as a civilian president on Thursday.

Although his return to civilian life was widely welcomed, opposition leaders said they were not ready to accept him as president until he restored the Supreme Court judges sacked under the emergency rule and released hundreds of lawyers and activists still being held in jail or under house arrest.

Last night, in an interview, Sharif said he would meet Bhutto at her Islamabad home tomorrow to persuade her to join a boycott of the general election on January 8.

Bhutto was killed by bomb blast

The team from the Metropolitan Police’s Counter Terrorism Command have backed the claim that Benazir Bhutto was not shot

BACKGROUND

• Pakistan in turmoil as ‘martial law’ imposed

• Bhutto escapes as bombers kill 126

• Timeline: Pakistan's period of turmoil

• The man out to oust a President

• Internal crisis gives Pakistan reason for hope

Imran Khan, the former Pakistan cricket captain, and other opposition leaders will also attend the meeting.

Sources close to Sharif said: “If [Bhutto’s] Pakistan Peoples party comes with us, it will be an antiMusharraf alliance. The boycott is a tactic, but the objective is an alliance to oust Musharraf and restore democracy and law and order.”

Sharif believes the January elections will be rigged to ensure victory for Musharraf and his supporters. Last night he said he would try to persuade Bhutto that the elections would not be free and fair, because any alleged violations would be investigated by compliant judges appointed by the president.

“I believe Benazir will want to go along with the democratic forces. The first item on the agenda is a boycott [of the elections] but it has to be a unanimous boycott. All the democratic forces must move ahead together to win this battle,” he said.

Sharif’s return from exile last month has galvanised Pakistani politics. He had been living in Saudi Arabia since he was ousted from office by Musharraf’s coup in 1999.

His previous attempt to return in September had ended in humiliation when Musharraf’s security services bundled him onto a plane and deported him back to Saudi Arabia.

Bhutto does not want to boycott the elections but is anxious not to be portrayed as the leader who saved the dictator. Last week she said: “An election boycott is not enough: we must also agree on what follows next.”

All the opposition parties would have to “agree to common goals, a common agenda, a common vision for transformation”, she added.

Bhutto’s and Sharif’s attempt to strike a pact emerged as senior generals close to the country’s new army chief, General Ashfaq Kayani, made clear that the army would turn its back on Musharraf and leave him to “sink or swim” as civilian president.

Musharraf last week gave his first indication that he could be forced to step down if opposition parties won the elections.

“I’m not into any deal with anyone . . . We have to see, after the election, how things develop. If the situation develops in a manner that is absolutely unacceptable to me, I have a choice of leaving,” he said.

Some of Pakistan’s most respected soldiers and generals have already published an open letter calling for Musharraf’s resignation as president. One of the authors of the letter, the former intelligence chief Lieutenant-General Talat Messud, said Musharraf was on his own.

“General Kayani will not take interference from Musharraf,” Messud said. “He will not take orders for the advancement of his personal interest; he will not prop him up. He wants the army more professionally engaged and is reluctant to be involved in politics. He wants to raise the prestige of the army in the eyes of the people.”

Kayani, a chain-smoking thinker with a passion for golf, is widely regarded as more honest and less extrovert than Musharraf. Born into a military family, he quickly rose through the ranks. He was corps commander of Rawalpindi when Musharraf picked him to investigate the 2003 assassination attempt against him by Islamic militants.

In his autobiography, In the Line of Fire, Musharraf credited Kayani with hunting down the perpetrators. He was rewarded with the job of running the all-powerful ISI intelligence service, overseeing Pakistan’s own war on terror.

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