Islamabad: Asif Ali Zardari, husband of Pakistan's former premier Benazir Bhutto, has been arrested again at the end of his weeklong parole granted to attend his mother's funeral.

Zardari was picked up by police from his native Nawbshah town on November 16 and was taken to a Karachi hospital, which was declared as a sub-jail, official reports in Islamabad said.

The former senator has been in custody since 1996 on corruption and criminal charges.

He was shifted a week ago so that he could travel to Karachi from Islamabad to meet his ailing mother in a hospital in the country's commercial capital and was later granted parole to allow him to attend his mother's funeral.

His re-arrest comes in the midst of a continuing stalemate between Pakistan's mainstream political parties, including Bhutto's Pakistan Peoples Party and the pro-Musharraf Pakistan Muslim League-Q (PML-Q) to form an elected government.

The PPPP (Pakistan People's Party-Parliamentarians) and the six religious party alliance, the Muthahida Majlis Amal (MMA) and deposed Prime Minister Nawaz Shairf's PML-N have demanded that Musharraf quit as President and abrogate his Constitutional amendments.

PTI