ISLAMABAD, Pakistan: Former Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif said Wednesday that rival opposition leader Benazir Bhutto was resisting his call for a boycott of Pakistan's crucial parliamentary elections.
In an interview with The Associated Press from exile in Saudi Arabia, Sharif also forecast that Saudi authorities would approve his plan to return to Pakistan.
"They feel very strongly that I have a duty to perform in Pakistan and a role to play," Sharif said by telephone from the Red Sea town of Jiddah.
However, he said he did not know whether Saudi leaders had actually communicated that to Musharraf when he held talks with them in Riyadh on Tuesday, or if Musharraf had agreed.
Sharif's second spell as Pakistan's prime minister was ended when Musharraf toppled him in a 1999 coup. Sharif agreed to go into exile a year later in return for his release from jail.
Musharraf quickly deported Sharif back to Saudi Arabia when he tried to return to Pakistan in September and the embittered former leader has been one of the general's most implacable critics.
Sharif's party has been calling for opposition parties to unite to force Musharraf to rescind a state of emergency declared on Nov. 3, under which thousands of Sharif's party workers have been detained.
The government announced Thursday that all were being released, including Sharif's lieutenants.
Sharif said that was not enough to prepare for Jan. 8 parliamentary elections, which he claimed would be rigged to favor pro-Musharraf parties and would be unfair if he was excluded.
A recent opinion poll found that Sharif was Pakistan's most popular politician.
But he said he had failed in a telephone conversation with Bhutto on Wednesday to convince her to boycott the poll "” a drastic step that would make it very hard for Musharraf, a key U.S. counterterrorism ally, to stay in control.
"It's a question of do we have to now be part of this illegal process that Gen. Musharraf has started?" Sharif said. "Benazir Bhutto has to first make up her mind ... I could not persuade her for the time being."
Sharif forecast that Musharraf would have to quickly lift the emergency measures, which have included blacking out the most critical TV news channels and purging the courts of independent-minded judges.
"This is the 21st century. We are not living in the stone age where such dictatorial actions could succeed," Sharif said.
He forecast that Pakistan's political roller coaster could still take more twists that could unseat Musharraf, and expressed dismay that the United States had still not broken with him. "What else does he have to do to cross the limit?" he asked