LONDON: Reading out from a newspaper clipping, former prime minister Nawaz Sharif nailed what he called a falsehood spread by Gen (retd) Musharraf that he did not know about Sharif-Clinton meeting of July 4, 1999 until the former informed him about it just before flying off to Washington.

The clipping showed a Dawn report datelined Karachi, June 26, 1999 and carrying the headline: COAS says Pakistan-US leaders may meet on Kashmir. 

The very first paragraph of the newspaper report read: The Chief of the Army Staff, General Pervez Musharraf, on Saturday hinted at ongoing efforts to arrange a meeting between Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif and US President Bill Clinton on the Kashmir issue.

Mr Sharif was responding to reporters’ questions concerning Musharraf’s assertions in one of his recent TV interviews in which he had again claimed that he was totally in the dark about the scheduled visit of Mr Sharif to Washington to meet Mr Clinton.

Mr Sharif said Musharraf had actually wanted a face-saver to cover up the Kargil debacle and so he kept pressing him to approach the Americans for the purpose. ‘I should have taken him along,’ he added with a broad smile.