LAHORE, Sept 24: The Pakistan Muslim League (N) on Sunday called for a fact-finding commission on Kargil conflict, which Gen Pervez Musharraf claims the then prime minister Nawaz Sharif was fully aware of while the latter says he was not.
“If Gen Musharraf is as big a hero of Kargil, why doesn’t he set up a commission to find out who is right and who is wrong,” PML-N information secretary Ahsan Iqbal said at a news conference at the Lahore Press Club.
He pointed out that Gen Musharraf’s telephonic conversation with a general, which was taped by India and leaked to the media, was sufficient to refute the claim that the then premier was in the picture.
Mr Sharif has been saying all along that he was informed about the conflict by then Indian premier Atal Behari Vajpayee.
Referring to President Musharraf’s statement that the US had threatened to ‘bomb Pakistan back to the stone age’, Mr Iqbal said the ‘disclosure’ amounted to insulting the nation.
He said the US had never used such language even for countries like Cuba, Haiti or Somalia.
The PML-N leader maintained that even if the US had hurled such a threat, the general must have taken the nation into confidence about it. However, he added, it was strange that President George Bush had denied the threat in the presence of Gen Musharraf and the latter failed to come up with a response because he was honour-bound to the publisher not to comment on the book before it came out.
President Bush’s denial, he said, meant that the decision to ‘deliver’ a threat had been taken at a lower level and yet Gen Musharraf succumbed.
He said the incident had re-established the fact that national security could be better ensured by a democratic set-up. He recalled how Mr Sharif had ignored the US pressure when Pakistan carried out nuclear tests in May 1998.
Had there been a democratic government at the time of 9/11, Pakistan would have joined the war on terror in a respectable manner, he said.
The PML-N leader alleged that the objective of Gen Musharraf’s ongoing visit to Washington was to obtain an NOC from the US to rig the 2007 polls.
But, he said, the nation would not let anyone rig elections this time. If the poll process was manipulated, he warned, the federation would be in jeopardy.
He criticised Gen Musharraf for getting his book written and published in the US rather than in Pakistan. He said that while expenses for the launch would be borne by the national exchequer, the royalty would go to the general. He called upon the general to make public the agreement signed with the publisher.
In reply to a question, he said the Sharifs would return to Pakistan before the next election.
