ISLAMABAD Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf Saturday issued a decree that effectively bars former prime ministers Benazir Bhutto and Nawaz Sharif from holding power ever again, officials said.

In terms of the qualification for public office order 2002, anyone who has held the office of prime minister or provincial chief minister for two terms "shall not be qualified to hold the office again," a senior government official told AFP.

The law apparently gives legal effect to Musharraf's repeated assertion that the two former prime ministers would not be allowed to regain political power as, according to him, they plundered national resources and ruined the economy during their rule.

Both are living abroad in exile: Sharif in Saudi Arabia and Bhutto in Dubai and London.

They reportedly plan to return home to launch a struggle for the restoration of democracy in the country.

Bhutto left Pakistan in 1998 when Sharif was in power because of alleged victimization by her main political adversary. She had been convicted of corruption.

Musharraf ousted Sharif in a bloodless coup in October 1999 and exiled him to Saudi Arabia in December 2000 in a deal in which Sharif's 21 years jail sentence for hijacking and tax evasion was commuted if he did not return for 10 years and did not engage in politics.

Bhutto is life chairperson of Pakistan People's Party and Sharif heads the Pakistan Muslim League.

The military government has said it would allow all parties to participate in the general elections due in October.