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Imran to make

political bid

next week,

says wife

LONDON: Former Pakistan cricket captain Imran Khan is likely to formally announce within the next week that he is forming a political party, his wife said on Monday.

Jemima Khan, the young British socialite whose marriage to Imran caused a stir last year, also acknowledged that her husband may have been personally targetted in the bomb that killed six people in a cancer hospital he built in Lahore.

Asked by BBC radio in London when her husband planned to make an official announcement about forming a political party, Jemima Khan said: "I think that's the next week or so."

Jemima Khan, who was in London at the time, said it was too early to be sure whether the bombers aimed to kill Imran.

"I gather he was meant to be there at around midday. It's fairly easy to target a person in Pakistan. There is very little security at the hospital. If someone had wanted to assassinate him I think it would have been fairly easy to do so."

Asked whether she and her husband would now be stepping up their personal security measures, she said. "It is a relaxed environment there at the hospital...The last thing on our minds up until now is that someone is going to blow up the out-patients department. So up until now we have had very little security."

She said she would be flying back to Lahore on the first available flight.

Jemima confirmed British newspaper reports that Princess Diana, who visited the hospital in February to help raise funds for it, was upset by the bombing.

"Diana was concerned for Imran...she heard he was devastated and she rang him and offered her condolences," she said.-Reuter