ISLAMABAD -- Pakistan's former premier Benazir Bhutto said in a television interview aired Saturday she would return to her country if allowed to fight elections there.

A two-time premier of Pakistan, Bhutto is barred from another term as prime minister by a law introduced by military leader President Pervez Musharraf which disqualifies any former leader from running for a third term in office.

She also faces arrest on her arrival in Pakistan on corruption related charges, but she told the BBC she was prepared to go to jail and would contest the election even as a prisoner.

"I don't mind going to prison as long as I can contest those elections," she said, speaking from her apartment in London. She has been living in self-imposed exile in the United Arab Emirates and London since 1998.

But Farhatullah Babar, spokesman for Bhutto's Pakistan People's Party (PPP), said Saturday that her return was never in doubt.

"She has declared time and again that she will return to Pakistan and contest elections, even from behind the bars of jail," he said. "She will return. The decision has been taken and it is not a question of whether, it is only a question of when."

In an interview with AFP earlier this week, Musharraf said if Bhutto went ahead with her plans he would not prevent her plane landing at Pakistani airports, nor prevent her entering the country through airport immigration.

"She goes through in a normal manner and we arrest her and we take her straight to the jail," he said in an interview at his official residence outside Islamabad.

Bhutto, who was dismissed twice as premier in 1990 and 1996 on corruption charges, said she was confident she could "overcome" the bar on her participation in the elections, which she said she could win.

Asked about the corruption allegations, she said they had been set aside and she had done nothing wrong.

She is also challenging an "absentee law" introduced last year which makes it compulsory for defendants to appear in court personally and under which she was convicted of "absconding".

A law imposed early august bans "absconders" from seeking public office. Musharraf on Wednesday enshrined the ban in unilaterally imposed changes to the constitution.

Bhutto accused Musharraf of being a "tin-pot military dictator" who was "murdering democracy" in Pakistan.

She predicted that if the bar on her candidacy was not lifted, popular pressure within Pakistan would force the authorities to allow her return.

"If I am stopped from contesting, the determination amongst the Pakistani people will be so much more," she said.

Party supporters on Thursday filled nominations for Bhutto's candidacy in two electoral districts in the southern Province of Sindh. Nominations close midnight Saturday local time (1800 GMT) and her two applications will be scrutinized by electoral authorities on Monday and August 30.