ISLAMABAD, Sept 8: Former Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif suffered a setback today when he tailed to obtain hl* chosen bicycle symbol for general elections on October 6, report* Reuter.

Sharif lost the familiar symbol used by hl* Muslim League Party to win the previous election In 1990 after a draw against a small breakaway faction of hl* party which I* allied

with his arch-rival, Benazir Bhutto,

The election commission gave Bhutto's Pakistan People's Party the arrow symbol. Symbols are vital in Pakistani elections as only 30 per cent of the country's 120 million people can read and write.

Most voters from the Isolated valleys of the Hindukush mountains in the north to the bullet-scarred slums of volatile Karachi In the south, will simply place a mark beside the symbol of their choice.

Benazir Bhutto. 40, has predicted victory for her party, identified by the arrow which swept her to power tn 1988 as the Muslim world's first woman prime minister.

T will launch a rain of arrows to finish off the remnants of dictatorship," she told an election rally in the southern province of Stnd.

Her government, the first elected tn party-based elections after 11 years of martial law, was sacked 20 months later by then President Ghulam Ishaq Khan on disputed charges of corruption and misrule.