Islamabad: Self-exiled ex-premier Benazir Bhutto said on September 4 she was unlikely to return to Pakistan to contest next month's elections, as she had previously vowed.

"It seems unlikely now," Bhutto said of her much-vaunted political comeback plan, three days after election officials rejected her nominations to contest three national Parliamentary seats.

"I did want to return to contest the elections, but the military regime is trampling every Democratic norm and defrauding the people of Pakistan with regard to Democratic and political rights," she said by phone from Dubai, one of the two cities she has lived in since leaving Pakistan in 1998.

"So I see little point in returning when my whole participation is under question."