Davos: Pakistan’s former leader Pervez Musharraf will certainly be
arrested if he returns to Pakistan, Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani
said Friday.
"In fact there had been murder charges against him,
and there had even been some very grave charges against him, and the
Supreme Court had already given a verdict against him," Gilani told CNN
from the Global Economic Forum in Davos.
"Certainly when he’ll come back, he has to face those charges and certainly be arrested," he said.
Musharraf
announced plans to return from exile in late January and to run in
upcoming elections, but his party said he was reassessing those plans
when Pakistan’s elected government warned that if he returned, he faced
arrest.
Pakistan’s upper house of Parliament passed a
non-binding resolution earlier this week demanding Musharraf be arrested
and tried for treason for unconstitutional acts during his regime, Sen.
Muhammad Ibrahim Khan said.
The charges against Musharraf are in connection with the 2007 assassination of former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto.
A
U.N. report in 2010 accused Musharraf’s government of failing to
protect Bhutto, who had returned to Pakistan from her own exile to run
for office.
Musharraf, who has been living in London and Dubai
since resigning in 2008, has denied the allegations, arguing that Bhutto
had police protection and took unnecessary risks, but a Pakistani court
still issued a warrant for his arrest.
Separately, Gilani
admitted "a lot of challenges" in the war on terrorism, including
militancy in the country’s northwest region.
"We are fighting
for our own selves, for our own survival, because these militants, they
have killed 30,000 innocent people, 5,000 brave soldiers," he said.
The fight against terrorism has caused a "loss of economy," Gilani said, but investment in the country remains.
"Yes,
we are fighting a war on extremism and terrorism, and we’re a
front-line state, yes, there are a lot of challenges," he said. "But it
doesn’t mean that there is no investment coming to Pakistan. We have
offered very lucrative incentives for the investment in Pakistan and
there are a lot of investment coming to Pakistan."
Gilani also
said people in Pakistan are "bitter" over an attack by NATO forces last
November that killed two dozen Pakistani soldiers near the Afghan
border. NATO has said the attack was "unintended."
"We have paid so much price for the war on terrorism," Gilani said. "People should appreciate our struggle." Online
