ISLAMABAD, July 13: Pakistan Muslim League (Nawaz) Information Secretary Ahsan Iqbal has accused President Gen Pervez Musharraf of misleading the nation by distorting of facts about the 1999 Kargil incident.

He was reacting to Gen Musharraf’s interview to a private TV channel in which he had claimed that former prime minister Nawaz Sharif had been extensively briefed on the Kargil issue in a February 1999 meeting.

Mr Iqbal said in a statement on Thursday that it was incorrect to say that Kargil helped Kashmir cause. As a matter of fact, he said, international opinion swayed on the Indian side after the incident and India was able to portray Kashmiris’ indigenous freedom struggle as cross-border terrorism.

He said that the meeting held on February 5, 1999 in Khel, Azad Kashmir, was about a new route for the area as Muzaffarabad-Khel Road was under fire from across the Line of Control.

The Nawaz government, he said, had decided to build a new road from Mansehra-Kaghan to Khel at a cost of Rs11 billion to provide an alternate and secure route for defence purposes.

“It is unfortunate that the nation is being misinformed and misled by General Musharraf,” the PML leader added.

He said that there was evidence on record, in which General Musharraf had admitted to hiding information (about Kargil) from the then prime minister

Mr Iqbal said that the PML-N had been demanding that an independent commission should be set up to investigate the Kargil incident but the government was not ready to meet the demand.

He said that it had been agreed in the Charter of Democracy, signed by component parties of the Alliance for the Restoration of Democracy in London, to set up a commission to investigate the Kargil incident.