ISLAMABAD, July 8: No family member of the exiled Sharif family will be allowed to contest the forthcoming general elections, Maj-Gen Rashid Qureshi told Dawn on Monday.

They cannot even come back before the end of the period of 10 years as has been stipulated in the agreement, the spokesman for President Gen Pervez Musharraf said.

In reply to a question, Maj-Gen Qureshi said that not only Mian Sharif, Nawaz Sharif, Shahbaz Sharif and Kulsoom Sharif, who had signed the agreement with the government, were debarred from contesting the elections but all those who had gone into exile under that agreement were ineligible to run for any public office.

The PML, however, has never accepted that the Sharif family had got a safe exit from the country as a result of an agreement with the government. “There is no agreement,” PML Information Secretary Siddiqul Farooq said.

Mr Farooq recalled a statement issued by Interior Minister Moinuddin Haider on Dec 20, 1999, a week after the Sharif family’s departure to Saudi Arabia, that the government had signed no agreement with the Sharifs.

He said that except Nawaz Sharif, who has been hit by the latest presidential order limiting a person to hold the chief executive’s office not more than two times, all the other family members could contest the elections.

The PML, Mr Farooq said, would challenge the Qualification to Hold Public Offices Order, 2002, in the Supreme Court.

He said Gen Musharraf had never kept his “personal enmity” towards Nawaz Sharif a secret and added that time and again the president had stated that he would not allow Nawaz Sharif to come back.

“It is not a question of the Constitution or law; it is an issue of personal vendetta of Gen Musharraf against the former elected prime minister,” he added.

Last year, Yousaf Abbas, son of Abbas Sharif, Nusrat Shahbaz, wife of Shahbaz Sharif, and her two daughters had returned to Lahore but they were forced to leave the country. Yousaf Abbas had also been detained by the police before he was extradited to Saudi Arabia.