AFP News
Saudi Arabia, Nov 23: Pakistan's exiled former premier Nawaz Sharif is to meet Saudi Arabia's King Abdullah on Friday to discuss plans to return to his homeland, a party spokesman said.
The Saudi monarch sent a special plane on Thursday which fetched Sharif from the Red Sea city of Jeddah and took him to the capital Riyadh, said Ahsan Iqbal, a spokesman for the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz.
"He is to meet the King tomorrow. After their meeting the details of the return of Nawaz Sharif will come to light," Iqbal told AFP.
The development comes a day after Musharraf returned from a visit to Saudi Arabia for talks with King Abdullah which a Pakistani official said focused on efforts to keep the ex-prime minister in the Arab kingdom.
Iqbal said Musharraf "had gone to Saudi Arabia to request the Saudi leadership to keep Mr Nawaz Sharif in the country till the general elections, but he has not accepted it."
"Musharraf has tried to make Saudi Arabia a party into Pakistani politics which is not acceptable," he added.
Musharraf's spokesman on Wednesday dismissed speculation that the president had met Sharif, the man he ousted in a bloodless coup in 1999 and then sent into exile the following year.
Sharif flew back to Pakistan on September 10 but was deported to Jeddah by Pakistani authorities just four hours later.