LAHORE, April 5: Two daughters and wife of former Punjab chief minister Mian Shahbaz Sharif arrived here from UAE by EK-620 on Saturday morning.

President Musharraf has allowed them to return in relaxation of the agreement under which a total of 18 members of the Sharif family were asked to leave the country in December 2000.

Javeria, the elder daughter, is to be engaged with a cousin. No date has been set for the purpose. Rabia has no such programme for the time being.

“The permission has been granted on humanitarian grounds. Nobody would be allowed to politically exploit the opportunity offered by the government,” the ruling party chief, Chaudhry Shujaat, said while talking to reporters.

Asked whether Shahbaz Sharif could also be permitted to return home, the PML(Q) president said his was a different case.

When it was pointed out that the family of Mian Abbas Sharif had still not gone back to Saudi Arabia although it had come only for less than two weeks’ stay here, Shujaat said the families should be treated differently (than their heads).

Salman Shahbaz received his mother and sisters at the airport. No police were present.

“We have come back to our country. We love our homeland,” Begum Nusrat Shahbaz said at the airport.

She said she and her daughters had nothing to do with politics. Salman Shahbaz said that his father was also eager to come back. But, he said, he did not know when he would. For the time being, he said, his father was in the United States for post-surgery care.