WASHINGTON, Oct 15: Former prime minister Nawaz Sharif said on Sunday that he would wait for his meeting with Benazir Bhutto to determine if she was really talking to the Musharraf government.

The two former prime ministers are scheduled to meet in London on October 19 to decide how to implement the charter of democracy they signed in the British capital on May 14.

“It will not be wise to make decisions on media reports,” Mr Sharif told reporters in Washington after addressing an iftar gathering by telephone from London.

“I am meeting mohtarima on the 19th and I am sure she will dispel these rumours,” he said.

The charter commits Ms Bhutto’s Pakistan People’s Party and Mr Sharif’s Pakistan Muslim League (N) to restoring democracy in the country and strengthening the parliamentary system.

They vowed to return home to take part in the campaign for 2007 elections and rejected speculation about a possible ‘deal’ with President General Pervez Musharraf.

Mr Sharif said he did not believe Ms Bhutto would enter a deal with the government after signing the charter of democracy.

He dispelled the impression that the alliance forged to ‘defeat the military regime’ in Pakistan had run into trouble over Ms Bhutto’s reported contacts with President Musharraf.

Last week, PML-N chairman and Mr Sharif’s close confidant Raja Zafarul Haq told reporters that the Sharif-Bhutto meeting of October 19 could be their last if differences were not resolved.

Even though Mr Haq did not outline the differences, PML-N leaders had said they found the continued back-channel contacts between Gen Musharraf’s confidants and Ms Bhutto alarming.

While the media in Pakistan have periodically reported such contacts, Ms Bhutto herself only recently acknowledged the back-channel talks, but reiterated there was no change in her stand that Gen Musharraf should quit the post of army chief and hold free elections.

Addressing his supporters at the PML (N) house near Washington, Mr Sharif said the 2007 elections could not be fair or free. “Gen Musharraf is already urging people to vote for his men. How can he be fair when he is already taking sides,” he asked. “The general says that Nawaz Sharif and Benazir Bhutto will not contest the 2007 elections. How can the elections be fair if the country’s two main politicians are kept out?”

He said he was prepared to appear before any commission formed to probe the Kargil incident and present ‘irrefutable evidence’ to show that Gen Musharraf never briefed him before ‘launching his Kargil misadventure’.

He said that the transcript of a telephone call Gen Musharraf made to his deputy, Lt-Gen Aziz Khan from Beijing during the crisis, also proved him right.

“In that tape, Gen Musharraf asks Gen Aziz if Mian Saheb knows about it and Gen Aziz says he does not,” said Mr Sharif. “I have a copy of this tape and I will present it before the proposed commission.”

He said he never met Gen Musharraf in Kaghan or Kail on dates the president says he did because he was “somewhere else on those dates and this can be checked from official records.”