Preparing to return to Pakistan after a seven-year self-imposed exile, former prime minister Benazir Bhutto [Images] has asserted that she cannot be sent out of the country like her political rival Nawaz Sharif.

"I don't know how I will be received. But I am not in the same boat as him (Sharif)," she said in an interview with Prabhu Chawla, editor of the India Today group.

She was responding to a question whether she expected a red carpet welcome in Pakistan.

Bhutto said Sharif had traded his imprisonment in cases of treason and tax evasion for a 10-year exile in Saudi Arabia with his family and this had involved foreign guarantees.

"I was given the same offer but I refused. So, unlike Sharif I cannot be put on a plane and sent off," she said.

Sharif had returned to Pakistan on September 10 but was bundled out and deported to Saudi Arabia within hours of his arrival in Islamabad.

About Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf [Images] being eligible to contest another term in office, Bhutto said "according to the Constitution, as a former army chief, there is a two-year bar on a government servant to contest. So this issue will end up in courts."