[Facts] The Players

Pervez Musharraf

* The second of three brothers, Musharraf was born into a middle class Muslim family in India in August 1943. His family moved to the newly created majority-Muslim state of Pakistan following India's independence and partition in 1947. He spent seven years in Turkey, during his civil servant father's posting to Ankara. In 1956 the family settled in Karachi, where Musharraf attended Roman Catholic and other Christian schools.

* Entering the Pakistan Military Academy in 1961, the keen sportsman and career military man first saw action as a young officer in the 1965 war against India, which saw him decorated for gallantry. Marrying in 1968, he endured the army's humiliating defeat by India in the 1971 war and served voluntarily for seven years in Pakistan's special service commandos group.

* Promoted to the rank of general and named army chief in October, 1998, Musharraf seized power from then Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif in 1999 in a bloodless coup. He first led the country as chief executive and then won a five-year presidential term in a 2002 referendum critics say was rigged.

* One of President George W. Bush's most important non-NATO allies in Washington's war on terrorism, supporters paint Musharraf as a strong leader who can save Pakistan's moderate Muslim majority from militant, religious extremism seeping into cities from tribal areas along the northwest frontier. However a bloody army assault on Islamabad's Red Mosque in July, during which 102 people were killed, led to a rise in attacks by Islamist militants that have killed several hundred people.

* A failed attempt to sack Chief Justice Iftikhar Chaudhry in March created a judicial and political crisis. Musharraf's popularity slumped and the Supreme Court reinstated Chaudhry. With exiled ex-leaders Benazir Bhutto and Nawaz Sharif threatening to return, Musharraf has made some pre-election concessions -- dropping long-standing graft charges against Bhutto, and designating a successor to take over as army chief so he can finally shed his uniform and be sworn in as a civilian president.

Benazir Bhutto's Heirs

Benazir Bhutto's party appointed her son Bilawal and her husband Asif Ali Zardari to succeed the slain Pakistani opposition leader on Dec. 30, 2007.

Here are some facts about her widower:

* As Bhutto's widower and a former minister in one of her governments, Zardari has the most experience and on paper is an obvious choice as political heir. But he is a divisive figure who wrestled with allegations of corruption for a decade.

* Even some Bhutto supporters regard him as a flawed character whose taste for power and the high life undermined her legacy. Zardari, who spent eight years in jail on corruption and drug-smuggling charges, denied any wrongdoing, accusing Bhutto's political opponents of concocting the allegations to ruin them.

* Zardari married Bhutto in an arranged union brokered by their mothers in 1987, a year before Bhutto was elected to her first term as prime minister. The son of a politician from Bhutto's own party, Zardari had the right political pedigree, but it was an uneven match in terms of family wealth and status.

* Zardari's family owned some farm land and a cinema in Karachi and indulged his passion for polo, but the Bhutto family was one of Pakistan's feudal landowners, an elite that has traditionally dominated Pakistani business and party politics.

* Within months of Benazir Bhutto's first election victory in 1988, allegations of suspicious deals involving state money and Zardari started to surface in newspapers. The president dismissed her government for corruption and misrule in 1990, but it was not until the end of her second term, in 1996, that international inquiries began to rake over state deals and bank transfers.

* Zardari, who became known as "Mr 10 Percent", accused Bhutto's successor as premier and her old foe, Nawaz Sharif, of trumping up allegations he had siphoned off state funds and taken multi-million-dollar kickbacks on plane and submarine deals.

* For some Pakistanis, though, Zardari showed genuine strength of character during his time in jail, which took a toll on his health.



Here are some facts about Bilawal Zardari, 19, a university student, Bhutto's only son and eldest child:

* Bilawal is six years short of the eligible age to stand for parliament and is more familiar with the high streets of Dubai and London, his family homes during Benazir Bhutto's long years of exile, than with Pakistan's troubled electorates.

* He went to a prestigious high school in Dubai and recently followed his mother's footsteps to Oxford, but his mother's constant political travails and his father's jailing for eight years on "cooked up" graft charges left a deep imprint on him.

* In the violent tradition of South Asia's major political dynasties, where leadership can end in a pool of blood, Bilawal finds himself called to center stage of an epic tragedy.

* Almost 30 years before his mother was assassinated in a gun-and-bomb attack, his grandfather, Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, Pakistan's first popularly elected prime minister, was hanged by the military regime that had deposed him.

* In his few press interviews, an adolescent Bilawal revealed a political conscience and a burning sense of injustice at the way his mother and father had been treated by Pakistan's military and by her chief political rival, Nawaz Sharif.

* As a 16-year-old at high school, he told the Press Trust of India in an interview in 2004 that he felt justice and democracy held the key to resolving Pakistan's problems.

* Asked if he would one day enter the whirlpool of Pakistani politics, Bilawal, a Taekwondo black-belt and horse-riding enthusiast like his father, was quoted as saying: "We will see, I don't know. I would like to help the people of Pakistan, so I will decide when I finish my studies." He added: "I can either enter politics, or I can enter another career that would benefit the people."

Nawaz Sharif

* Born into a Kashmiri family of industrialists in Lahore on Dec. 25, 1949, Sharif studied law at Punjab University and worked in the family business before going into politics in the Pakistan Muslim League (PML). Joining the Punjab cabinet as finance minister in 1981, he became its chief minister in 1985.

* Prime minister for two terms in the 1990s, Sharif was overthrown by the army chief he appointed, General Pervez Musharraf, eight years ago. The bloodless ouster was Pakistan's fourth military coup since independence in 1947.

* After the coup Sharif was convicted of graft and banned from politics, and given a life sentence for hijacking. Allowed to go into exile in Saudi Arabia in 2000, amid reports of a deal between his family and Musharraf's military government, he was given a presidential pardon the day his family left.

* On Aug. 23, 2007, Pakistan's top court ruled Sharif, 57, and his brother were free to return. Sharif tries to return on Sept. 10 but is arrested at Islamabad airport and deported to Saudi Arabia, despite the Supreme Court clearance.

* The first industrialist to rule Pakistan, Sharif tried to reverse socialist policies and open up the economy. In 1991, he was embroiled in controversy after trying to make Islamic sharia law the supreme law of Pakistan. In May 1998 he oversaw the country's first nuclear tests.

Others

IMRAN KHAN: Cricket star who led Pakistan to World Cup glory in 1992 before forming his own political party, the Movement for Justice. Has only one seat in parliament, his own, but has been a vocal opponent of Musharraf. Khan was placed under house arrest last week but emerged from hiding on Wednesday to join a student rally in Lahore, where he was swiftly detained by police.

QAZI HUSSAIN AHMAD, FAZLUR REHMAN: Leader and secretary general of the Muttahida Majlis-e-Amal, a six-party Islamist alliance which came onto the scene amid anti-US feeling in Pakistan in 2001. Ahmad heads the Jamaat-e-Islami party while Rehman heads Jamiat-Ulema-e-Islam, another hardline group. The MMA ruled in two provinces bordering Afghanistan until last month. Both men have had frosty relations with Bhutto.

OTHER PARTIES: There are other nationalist parties that oppose Musharraf in North West Frontier Province, southern Sindh and southwestern Baluchistan provinces.