Pakistan

Pakistani cricket legend Imran Khan said on Friday he was "quietly confident" of victory in a general election this month and that as prime minister, he would drive an anti-corruption and anti-poverty campaign in the south Asian nation.

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The 65-year-old opposition leader, a glamorous part of the London upper crust in his younger days, also dismissed allegations that the powerful military was working behind the scenes to favour his campaign for the July 25 poll.

Oxford-educated Khan spoke in an interview as his arch foe, ousted former prime minister Nawaz Sharif, was due to return to the country and be arrested on a conviction that was handed down by an anti-graft court last week. Much of the eastern city of Lahore, the hometown of both Khan and Sharif, was on alert for protests by Sharif's supporters.

Khan is campaigning hard on populist promises of a prosperous Pakistan that breaks away from its persistent legacy of corruption, even as he expands appeals to nationalist and religious sentiment in the nuclear-armed, Muslim nation.

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As prime minister, he says he will partially model his promised anti-corruption campaign and poverty reduction programs on China, Pakistan's traditional ally that has financed billions of dollars of infrastructure projects.

Whoever wins the election will also have to navigate Pakistan's often-fraught relations with the United States over the U.S.-backed government's war against Taliban militants in neighbouring Afghanistan. Washington accuses Pakistan of not doing enough to root out Taliban militants who shelter on the Pakistani side of the border, and the Trump administration has recently cut foreign aid and applied diplomatic and financial pressure on Islamabad to try to force change