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Aides urge Bhutto to stay away from Pakistan

The top decision-making body of the opposition Pakistan People's Party has asked its leader Benazir Bhutto to defer her return to the country from abroad to avoid imminent arrest after her conviction by a court in a corruption case, press reports said today.

The joint meeting of the party's central executive committee and the federal council also drew up plans for a country-wide protest against the five-year jail sentences and 8.6-million-dollar fines imposed on the former prime minister and her husband, Asif Ali Zardari. Zardari has been behind bars since dismissal of Bhutto's government in November 1996 on corruption charges.

The Lahore high court on Thursday also barred Bhutto and Zardari, both members of the national assembly, from holding public office for five years.

Bhutto, who is currently outside the country, had described the judgement as a "miscarriage of justice". Her counsel, Iftikhar Gillani, said they would appeal to the Supreme Court.

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