ISLAMABAD, Nov 26: Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) leader Ahsan Iqbal has said the policies of President Gen Pervez Musharraf have shattered the country’s self-respect.

Talking to a group of doctors and engineers here on Monday, the former Planning Commission deputy chairman said the conditions that the General had accepted in joining the coalition despite being at the helm of affairs of a nuclear country, would not be considered even by a country like Somalia.

The country stood isolated in the region as a result of the government’s Afghan policy, he said while pointing out that the western borders were unsafe and internal conflicts on the rise.

The economic benefit earned against this policy was a mere one billion dollars that the Philippines had been able to acquire without sacrificing its national interests.

On the contrary, he said, the Nawaz Sharif government had upheld the self-respect of the nation with its decision to go nuclear despite facing immense pressure from the western countries, specially the US.

In the Nawaz era, the people were confident that their own leaders rather than the US president made decisions in the light of national interests, Mr Iqbal said, claiming that Mr Sharif had never betrayed the national interests in collusion with the IMF or the World Bank and always rejected conditions that would hit the poor people of the country.

General Musharraf on the other hand accepted conditions that were going to have negative effects on the poor of the country in general and the agricultural sector of the economy in particular, Mr Iqbal maintained.

He recalled that the Nawaz Sharif government had initiated a programme of national self-reliance which had promotion of agriculture, modernization of the economic infrastructure as well as the industrial sector and development of human resources as some of its key features.

However, the present government had abandoned all those projects and again left the nation with a begging bowl, the PML-N leader remarked.

He said the PML wanted to see Pakistan as an upright country based on universal Islamic principles as envisioned by Allama Iqbal and the Quaid-i-Azam. He said the country’s honour and self-esteem could be redeemed only when we do away with the economic dependence and become a self-reliant nation.

Restoration of the nation’s honour, economic revival and strengthening of national security are now the first priorities for the country. The next manifesto of the Pakistan Muslim League would therefore be based on the idea of an honourable and self- reliant Pakistan, he added.

Mr Iqbal said no plan of economic revival could succeed in an atmosphere of political instability and uncertainty. Therefore, it would be foolish to hope for investments as long as the Musharraf government existed, the PML leader remarked.