NEW YORK, Nov I9: Former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto has said she and the PML (N) leader Nawaz Sharif plan to return to Pakistan together to participate in the next general elections and collaborate to amend the constitution so that they can again become prime ministers of the country.

In the immediate future, “my party and the alliance with Mr Sharif are both looking to put an end” to this limitation of terms to become prime minister, she said in a interview with Newsweek magazine.

“We feel that it should be left to the people of Pakistan. It’s not like America, where a president is elected and he completes (one or) two terms.

Our terms are interrupted, so they don’t really qualify in the American sense of two terms. I am planning to go back to Pakistan to help my party in the next general elections. If that limitation is lifted, I’ll run for prime minister,” she asserted.

Noting that the reality is that “power flows from the gun,” Ms Bhutto said “we need to reverse the culture of violence and replace it with a culture of law and tolerance”

Asked to elaborate on her alliance with her former adversary, Nawaz Sharif, she said “I travelled to Saudi Arabia last year to meet with Mr Sharif. I told him that (people) inside and outside Pakistan are concerned that both of us spend so much time fighting each other (and) that if democracy was restored, we might have another round of senseless political battles.”

“We needed to send a signal that we’ve learned our lessons and that next time it will be different. We came up with a “Charter of Democracy” (which is) aimed at creating a political system of checks and balances.”

On a question about General Pervez Musharraf’s alliance with the United States since 9/11, she said: “I think General Musharraf took the rightdecision following the events of 9/11 to stand with the international community to fight terrorism. But I question how effective he has been in eliminating terrorism.”

“There is a lack of implementation of his decisions in many parts of the country, and we have seen in [recent] years how the Taliban have reorganised themselves, and their goal is to take over Afghanistan once again.”