LONDON, Aug 22: PML-N President Mian Shahbaz Sharif has reiterated his earlier claim and that of his brother former Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif that the two did not leave the country in December 2000 as a result of any deal with the government of Pakistan.

Shahbaz refused to identify the gentleman who, as the signed document said, had negotiated the 10-year exile deal with the government of Pakistan on behalf of Nawaz, Shahbaz and the rest of Sharif family.

He did not deny having signed a document before the family left for Saudi Arabia which, he claimed, they did because of guns pointed at their heads and threats of dire consequences for the entire family, including their old parents, if they did not comply.

He also did not deny that before he left Saudi Arabia in 2003 for the US for medical treatment he had signed an undertaking that he would not indulge in political activities during his visit and that he would return to Saudi Arabia after treatment.

He said President Musharraf had kept sitting on the undertaking for almost three weeks while he was fighting for his life against a near fatal form of cancer.

Shahbaz implied that he left for the US finally without waiting for the permission to arrive from Islamabad and said that the officer who had renewed his expired passport on an urgent basis so that he could leave for treatment in time was transferred back to Pakistan as a punishment.

He, however, kept side-stepping direct questions and would break into political harangue against Musharraf every time he was asked about the content of the document the Sharif family had signed in December 2000.

When pressed he said he had not seen the documents which the government submitted to the Supreme Court on Wednesday.

At this he was told that Dawn had already forwarded to him on his e-mail the copies of the documents. So, would he check and respond? He said he would, but till the filing of this report, there was no response from him and his telephone was on answering machine.

Meanwhile, Nawaz Sharif while talking to a private TV channel once again rejected the government claim of a deal.

He said he neither knew about the documents nor did he sign any deal.

“There is not an iota of truth in this talk about a deal,” he remarked.

Amir Wasim adds from Islamabad: A senior PML-N leader criticised the government for directly involving Saudi Arabia in the internal matter of Pakistan to achieve its ‘political objectives’ but did not deny the documents the government presented in the Supreme Court establish that the two went into self-exile under an agreement.

The party’s information secretary Ahsan Iqbal said it was condemnable act of the government to involve a brotherly and friendly country in the political affairs of Pakistan.

Asked about the undertaking showing Shahbaz Sharif promising that travel from Saudi Arabia to the United States would be solely for medical treatment and no other purpose, the PML-N official said: “I can’t say anything about it. It does not say to whom the undertaking was given and where.”

PML-N president Shahbaz Sharif had used the opportunity for political purposes and also flew to Lahore from where he was forcibly put on a return flight for defying his undertaking.

Mr Iqbal said the government had submitted photo-copies of the deal having signatures of Nawaz Sharif and Shahbaz Sharif to the Supreme Court, which clearly proved that there was no deal between Sharif brothers and the Musharraf government.

He said the regime had sought three weeks’ time from the court to submit original documents which showed that these documents were not the property of the government.

Mr Iqbal said that by presenting the documents of the so-called deal before the court in this important political case, the government had dragged brother country Saudi Arabia into the political matters of Pakistan. He said the government had submitted some so-called undertakings, but the court had not been informed as to whom these undertakings had been given by the Sharifs.

The PML-N leader said it was regrettable that instead of fighting a constitutional and legal battle, the government had started using ‘unconstitutional’ means only to stop the Sharif brothers from coming to Pakistan.

He said had the Sharif brothers gone abroad under a deal, they would not have filed a petition in the Supreme Court for their return.