KARACHI, April 9: Former prime minister Benazir Bhutto has summoned her lawyer, Farooq Naek, to Dubai for “consultation” a week before her spouse Asif Ali Zardari’s arrival at Lahore on April 16.

Mr Naek left for Dubai by a foreign airline on Saturday morning, said Pakistan People’s Party sources. They further said that April 16 would be “a litmus test of the government’s mind set and whatever might or might not been going on between the regime led by General Musharraf and PPP leadership”.

Farooq Naek would probably look into the legal issues that might crop up on that day. Mr Zardari was on bail in all the cases he had been implicated and had travelled abroad with the permission of the competent authority.

According to PPP sources, Asif Zardari would not be violating any law by returning home. If the government invoked Section 144 on that day to thwart PPP mobilization, he might be detained for violating that law and released the other day, or he might be detained under MPO for some time and sent to Karachi or elsewhere, they said.