January 30, 2003	Thursday	Ziqa’ad 26,1423

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ISLAMABAD, Jan 29: Pakistan Muslim League-N chief Shahbaz Sharif suddenly left Jeddah for the United States on Wednesday in an apparent easing of travel curbs on him after more than two years of exile in Saudi Arabia where he was sent along with his elder brother and former prime minister Nawaz Sharif by the Musharraf government.

A party spokesman said Mr Shahbaz Sharif had gone to London from Jeddah on Tuesday on his way to New York on Wednesday.

A government spokesman linked the trip — the first by any of the two Sharif brothers outside Saudi Arabia since the start of their exile in December 2000 — to “humanitarian grounds”.

But a PML-N spokesman said no request for the trip had been made to the Pakistan government, which had sent the two brothers, their elderly father Mian Mohammad Sharif and more than 15 other family members into a 10-year exile in a deal brokered by the Saudi royal family.

“Yes, he has gone to America. He was feeling unwell, and it was on humanitarian grounds that he has gone there,” President Pervez Musharraf’s spokesman Maj-Gen Rashid Qureshi told Dawn.

He declined to say whether Mr Shahbaz Sharif had asked for permission for the US trip, but added: “It is in the knowledge of the president.”

“No request was made to the government,” PML-N information secretary Mohammad Siddiqueul Farooq said about the trip, which has been welcomed by one-time Nawaz Sharif rival and former prime minister Benazir Bhutto, whose Pakistan People’s Party is now an ally of PML-N in opposition.

The PML-N official said Mr Shahbaz Sharif would contact his party leaders in Pakistan in “a day or two” and could probably also talk to the press.

INTELLIGENCE CONTACT DENIED: A party source said the head of a Pakistani intelligence agency had met the former Punjab chief minister in Jeddah twice last month.

But Gen Qureshi rejected the report as “absolutely incorrect”.

PML-N sources said the possibility of their party leader meeting some US officials to discuss the political situation in Pakistan could not be ruled out.

When the Sharif brothers and other family members were sent into exile in Saudi Arabia, Gen Musharraf had waived two convictions against the former prime minister whom he had toppled in the Oct 12, 1999 coup. The government had then said the Sharif family had requested the exile. But the PML-N said there was no deal with the government and that the Sharif brothers were forced into exile to keep them away from national politics.

Nawaz Sharif named Shahbaz Sharif as party president in his place before last October’s general election after presidential decrees disqualified the former premier from heading the party or standing in the elections on grounds of his convictions by special courts on the charges of ordering a plane hijack and corruption that he denied.

Shahbaz Sharif could not return home to lead the party because the government said none of the family members could come before the expiry of the 10-year exile period. He also could not stand in the elections on the ground that his signatures on his nomination papers were not certified by the Pakistani consulate in Jeddah.

In Shahbaz Sharif’s absence, the party — badly beaten in the October 10 elections — is led by chairman Raja Zafarul Haq and acting president Makhdoom Javed Hashmi.

PPP HAPPY: Benazir Bhutto, living in a self-imposed exile abroad since early 1999, was quoted as welcoming Shahbaz Sharif’s trip, saying she would be happy at anybody’s freedom.

But a private television channel quoted her as saying that she had no knowledge whether Mr Sharif’s was a political or a private trip for medical treatment.

PPP spokesman Farhatullah Babar said his party did not expect any government concessions to help the return of Benazir Bhutto, who is wanted in the country to face corruption charges that she denies.

“We do not expect, but we have been demanding and continue to demand (such facilities) as a matter of right and not charity or deal,” he told Dawn.

ARRIVAL IN US: Mr Shahbaz Sharif is scheduled to arrive in the United States on Wednesday night, according to the president of the party’s branch here, Masood Haider adds from New York.

The party official, Mr Khalid Luqman, said he received information at 4am (US Eastern time) that Mr Shahbaz Sharif had left London on his way to the US on a private visit.

The former chief minister of Punjab could be seeking medical attention and “intends his visit to remain private”, Mr Luqman said.

“I talked to Mian Sahib (Nawaz Sharif) in Riyadh and he confirmed that his brother had left for the United States,” Mr Luqman added.

It is not clear whether Mr Shahbaz Sharif would be staying in New York or go to another city to seek medical attention.