Former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto, leader of Pakistan's largest opposition party, said last night she hoped to return home by mid-October for elections in which she may ally with President Pervez Musharraf.
But Ms Bhutto said any deal with the president depended on him taking-confidence building steps by the end of August, such as lifting a ban on her serving a third term as prime minister.
"I would like to go back to Pakistan sooner rather than later, but General Musharraf still is opposed to my return to Pakistan," Ms Bhutto told Reuters in an interview in New York.
"He's prepared for my return to Pakistan but the timing of it is under dispute between the two of us."
A cabinet minister said last night the beleaguered president, who is army chief of staff and took power in a coup in 1999, wants exiled former prime ministers Ms Bhutto and Nawaz Sharif to stay away from Pakistan before elections.
Asked when she planned to return, she said she was thinking of between September and December. "I'm expecting the general elections to be called some time in October or November, but if I had my little Aladdin's lamp then I would ask the genie to get me there by Eid, which falls in October," she said.
The Eid holiday is expected to start around October 13th.
Ms Bhutto became the first female prime minister in the Muslim world when she was elected in 1988 at age 35. She was deposed in 1990, re-elected in 1993, and ousted again in 1996 amid charges of corruption and mismanagement.
Ms Bhutto said she had a "confidential understanding" with Gen Musharraf on the principle of her return from a decade of exile and on her demand that he should resign from the army in order to be a civilian president rather than a military ruler.