ISLAMABAD (Thomson Financial) - Former Pakistan prime minister Nawaz Sharif returned from exile on Monday to face a showdown with President Pervez Musharraf, vowing to topple the man who ousted him eight years ago.
The defiant Sharif said he was returning 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.
His flight from London touched down in the morning. The government did not say if it planned to arrest Sharif on arrival.
Police had detained hundreds of Sharif's supporters ahead of his return, and Islamabad airport was completely sealed off, surrounded by a five-kilometer security cordon that kept his followers from reaching the site.
But 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 plane carrying Nawaz Sharif has landed,' a senior official at Islamabad airport confirmed.
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.
After Sharif's ouster, he 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.
Sharif has sharply criticised Bhutto for trying to work out any agreement that could see Musharraf remain in power, and it was unclear what his return would mean for any potential deal with her.
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