Former Pakistani Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto attends a news conference in Al Murooj Rotana, as her younger daughter Asifa sits next to her, in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, yesterday. Bhutto said she would return to Pakistan today to end eight years of self-exile and lead her party into national elections despite threats of al Qaeda suicide attacks. - Reuters

DUBAI (Reuters):

Former prime Minister Benazir Bhutto said she would return to Pakistan today to end eight years of self-exile and lead her party into national elections despite threats of al Qaida-inspired suicide attacks.

"Many threats have been made from left, right and centre to try and intimidate not only me, but most important of all, the people of Pakistan so that they should not go to the airport to receive me," Bhutto said in Dubai, yesterday.

Some 20,000 government security personnel were being deployed along the route from Karachi's airport to the site near the tomb of Pakistan's founder Mohammad Ali Jinnah where Bhutto planned to address a rally, according to a provincial official.

"There are intelligence reports that three different groups have plans to carry out attacks on Bhutto," Ghulam Mohammad Mohtaram, Home Secretary of Sindh province, told Reuters.

The official said the suicide attacks were being planned by Pakistani jihadi groups linked to al Qaida and Pakistani Taliban commander Baitullah Mehsud, whose fighters were holding more than 200 Pakistani soldiers hostage close to the Afghan border.

Pakistan's biggest city was gearing up for her arrival.

Billboards bearing images of Bhutto smiling beneath a trademark white scarf loomed over downtown Karachi, while youths on motorcycles zipped through suburbs with pennants of her Pakistan People's Party aloft.

PPP leaders predicted a million people will turn out to greet her, as supporters carrying red, black and green party banners streamed in from villages in the flat, arid hinterland of Sindh.

Despite being out of power since 1996, the charismatic Bhutto, 54, remains one of the most recognisable women politicians in the world, having been prime minister twice and the first female leader of a Muslim nation.

The United States is believed to have quietly encouraged an alliance between President Pervez Musharraf and Bhutto to keep nuclear-armed Pakistan pro-Western, committed to fighting al Qaeda and supportive of NATO's efforts to stabilise Afghanistan.