PESHAWAR, May 7: The PML-N has demanded release of its workers allegedly arrested by the federal and Punjab governments with a view to preventing them from reaching the Lahore airport to receive party president Mian Shahbaz Sharif who plans to arrive there at 6:30pm on Tuesday.

Speaking at a news conference at the Peshawar Press Club on Friday, PML provincial chief Pir Sabir Shah said that the Punjab government had arrested a large number of party activists in Lahore, Faisalabad, Multan and other towns of the province.

The Punjab police, he pointed out, had besieged the houses of the PML workers and leaders in Lahore and detained them inside the four walls. Mr Shah said his party would not provide a safe passage to Gen Pervez Musharraf and his team, who had dismissed the PML government in 1999 and then divided political parties and wiped out the democratic norms.

He said the ruling clique had pushed the country to an unending crisis. He said all the component parties of the ARD would welcome Mr Shahbaz Sharif on his arrival on Tuesday and added that the PML-N welcomed the MMA's offer to facilitate its president's return home.

Mr Shah said he and other PML leaders would lead a motorcade of 1,000 vehicles, which would leave Peshawar for Lahore on Tuesday morning. He said that former NWFP chief minister Sardar Mehtab Ahmed Abbasi, also leading a motorcade from Hazara, would join them at Hasan Abdal.

The provincial PML-N chief said they hoped that the government would not hamper their caravan and warned the government against creating any hurdle in their way.

He said the government had failed to provide protection to the life and property of citizens, who were being shot dead in seminaries, on roads and in their houses by extremists and terrorists. The bomb blast in a Karachi mosque on Friday was enough to expose the government's writ, he added.

Mr Shah denied any wheat crisis in the country and claimed that it was a planned move to divert the people's attention from the scheduled return of Mr Shahbaz Sharif. ARD secretary-general Iqbal Zafar Jhagra and other PML leaders were present.