Nawaz Sharif, the former Pakistani prime minister, has vowed he will return to Pakistan, ignoring a call from Saudi Arabia for him to remain in exile.

Sharif said on Saturday that both he and his brother, Shahbaz, would return to Pakistan on September 10, despite suggestions that they could both be arrested on corruption charges.

Earlier Muqrin bin Abdul Aziz, Saudi Arabia's intelligence chief, had called on Sharif to honour the terms of a Saudi-brokered deal which sent him into exile seven years ago.

Sharif was sentenced to life in prison on treason charges but released on condition that he live in exile for 10 years.

The former prime minister was jailed after being ousted in a 1999 military coup led by Pervez Musharraf, Pakistan's current president.

Sharif is set to ignore the Saudi request and reaffirmed his intention to return home at a news conference in London.

Sharif demanded Musharraf stop trying to block his way, asking: "Why is Musharraf so afraid that he is putting the country's solidarity at stake by involving the brotherly country of Saudi Arabia?"

He said it was Musharraf, and not he, who had broken his word.

"Today he is accusing me of breaching the contract when in fact he is the one who broke the constitutional pledge that he took when he was appointed as the army chief," he told reporters.

"I am a Pakistani and it is my mission to go to Pakistan and save my country from the current turmoil and chaos."

 Crackdown

Pakistani authorities have meanwhile detained more than 2,000 supporters of Sharif, his party said on Sunday.

"The way the government has acted has proven our point that there is no democracy under Musharraf, there is dictatorship in the country," said Ahsan Iqbal, Sharif's spokesman, .

He said authorities had detained more than 2,000 activists from Sharif's party in Punjab province, Sharif's political power base: "Politically, they are very sacred of a big show of popularity upon his arrival."

A provincial police official said 250 "trouble makers" had been picked up.

Ahead of the former prime minister's return, the Pakistani government has reopened corruption cases against Sharif and his family and has suggested that Sharif could be quickly arrested on his return.

Media reports say a "VIP cell" at a 16th-century fortress is being prepared for him.

Meanwhile, a court in the eastern city of Lahore issued an arrest warrant on Friday for Shahbaz Sharif in connection with a murder case.

Saad al-Hariri, son of assassinated ex-Lebanese prime minister Rafiq al-Hariri, has also called on Sharif not to return.

Sharif acknowledged that al-Hariri, who visited him in a Pakistani jail after his conviction in 2000 on terrorism and hijacking charges, had secured his release with an understanding that he would not return for a decade.

But Sharif said that al-Hariri later told him the period of exile was only five years, though he acknowledged that was not mentioned in the document he signed.

In Pakistan, Musharraf is facing political unrest as both Sharif and Benazir Bhutto, another former premier, are poised to return.

Bhutto will announce when she will go back to Pakistan on September 14, but has said it will be within "weeks, not months".

Musharraf has denounced both Sharif and Bhutto as corrupt and incompetent and blamed them for Pakistan's near-bankruptcy in the 1990s.

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Police have arrested hundreds of Sharif's supporters ahead of his return