The New Nation - Internet Edition

AP, Islamabad

Returning from exile to Pakistan under emergency rule, former Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif said on Sunday he was determined to rid the country of dictatorship.

President Pervez Musharraf, the army general who deposed Sharif in a coup eight years ago, declared emergency powers on Nov. 3, but agreed to allow Sharif to return home from Saudi Arabia.

"We want democracy and nothing else," Sharif told the BBC by telephone on arriving back in his hometown Lahore from the Saudi city of Medina. "I am here to play my role and also make my own efforts to rid the country of dictatorship."

AP report adds: Former Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif prepared to meet a Monday deadline to register for Pakistan's key January parliamentary elections, a day after he returned from exile to an ecstatic welcome from thousands of his supporters. Sharif has said he is registering to keep his options open, but that he will boycott the vote unless President Gen. Pervez Musharraf ends emergency rule, frees opponents and restores the Supreme Court, which was purged of independent judges.

Sharif, who was ousted by Musharraf in a 1999 coup, was to register in the main court complex in Lahore - his hometown and political power base - at the head of a rally of supporters.