June 30, 2003	Monday	Rabi-us-Sani 29,1424

Please Visit our Sponsor (Ads open in separate window)

LAHORE, June 29: The federal government has told the Punjab government to deport families of Mian Shahbaz Sharif and his brother Mian Abbas Sharif to Saudi Arabia at the earliest, Interior Minister Makhdoom Syed Faisal Saleh Hayat told Dawn on Sunday.

He said the government knew about the whereabouts of the two families and reports to the contrary were baseless.

The government, the interior minister said, had been urging members of the two families to leave the country voluntarily as it did not want to use strong arm tactics in this regard.

Mian Abbas Sharif’s family, also covered in the banishment agreement, had returned much earlier than Shahbaz Sharif’s family and were leading a quiet life.

The minister said the agreement was applicable to both the families, adding that they would be made to leave the country. However, he said, the logistics would be decided by the Punjab government.

No member of Nawaz Sharif’s family has returned to Pakistan since their banishment in Dec 2000.

The minister said that the government had already prepared passports of the people to be sent back to Saudi Arabia, which were valid travel documents.

Dismissing the PML-N leaders’ claims that the government had prepared bogus passports for the two families, the minister said that the government could not involve itself in such an activity.

He said that new passports had been necessitated as the families to be deported had deliberately destroyed the ones they had been provided earlier.

Referring to Mian Shahbaz Sharif’s desire to return to Pakistan, the interior minister warned that the former Punjab chief minister should not expect a ‘red carpet’ reception, asserting that under the banishment agreement, he could not come back. But, he said, if he wanted to come back in violation of the agreement, he should muster courage and take a Pakistan-bound flight. “If he wants to violate the agreement, the government will be free to initiate any action it deems fit,” the interior minister said without elaborating the consequences.

Meanwhile, the police were withdrawn from the Sharifs’ Model Town residences late Saturday night.