Pakistan airports on high alert

Islamabad: Pakistan stepped up security at all of its major airports on Sunday after receiving reports about possible terror attacks, a day before the nation's exiled former Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif was to return home, officials said.

Sharif plans to fly from London to Islamabad on Monday and travel by motorcade to his home to campaign against President Gen. Pervez Musharraf, who ousted his elected
government in a 1999 coup.

"I will go back to Pakistan on Sept. 10 with my brother because my country needs me," he said Saturday at a news conference in London, after a Saudi envoy urged him to
respect a 2000 agreement under which he promised to stay away for 10 years.

As Sharif spurned the Saudi pressure and vowed to return home, authorities in Pakistan quickly put all of their major airports on high alert to avoid possible attacks, said two senior intelligence officials.

The officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitive nature of the issue, did not explain whether they had received any specific terror report, although they said they would not allow any public gathering near the airports.

The new security measures came days after the US Embassy warned its citizens to avoid popular markets and crowded areas, saying it had received "non-specific information
regarding terrorist attacks, possibly suicide attacks, against US interests or places frequented by Westerners in the major cities in Pakistan."

The government has suggested that Sharif could be quickly arrested. Media reports suggest a "VIP cell" at a 16th-century fortress is being readied.

But Sharif says he would rather be a political prisoner than avoid a "decisive battle with dictatorship."