LONDON, Feb 4: The Pakistan Muslim League-N has decided to hold an international judicial conference soon to revisit the verdict of the Pakistani courts holding former prime minister Nawaz Sharif guilty in a plane hijacking case.

Talking to Dawn here on Wednesday, Mr Sharif said he had set up a panel headed by Ghous Ali Shah to contact reputed judges and lawyers all over the world in this connection.

This conference, he said, would be held on the lines organised by the first PPP government in 1989 to revisit the verdict against former prime minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto by Pakistan’s Supreme Court.

The verdict of the 1989 international judicial conference which was attended by retired judges of international fame and reputed lawyers was: Mr Bhutto’s was a judicial murder.

“You see I was held guilty of a crime by a court of Musharraf when in actual fact no crime was committed,” said Mr Sharif.

Elaborating, he said, the prime minister of Pakistan had the powers to dismiss a Chief of Army Staff and it was within the competence of any relevant PIA officer to direct the pilot of any PIA carrier to land at an alternative landing strip.

“So, where was the crime? I had the powers to dismiss Musharraf and the relevant PIA officer was competent enough under the rules to order the plane carrying Musharraf to land at an alternative landing strip. If any hijacking had taken place, it was committed by Musharraf who had taken over the command of the plane and had ordered the pilot to delay the landing until he was certain that the coup makers had successfully countermanded my orders. It was he who had put the lives of the passengers in danger by delaying the landing until the plane was almost out of fuel,” he said.

Earlier, speaking to the media he reiterated his demand that the government should fulfil at least three of the promises made under the Charter of Democracy.

“It should immediately restore Chief Justice Iftikhar Chaudhry, declare all November 3, 2007, actions of Musharraf as illegal and do away with the 17th amendment,” Mr Sharif said.

He said his party would not do anything to destabilise the government but in case things were allowed to drift ‘in this manner’ there was the danger that extra-constitutional elements would find the situation ripe for exploitation.

He said Pakistan was facing big problems at the moment and it would be well nigh impossible for one party or two parties to successfully tackle these problems. “We need to mobilise the entire nation for this task.”

He claimed that nothing had changed since the formation of the new government which had come into being after “such a long struggle against a dictator and his way of rule”.

“We are still struggling for the same things for which we had struggled during Musharraf’s rule. What kind of a macabre joke is this?”

Answering a question asked by an Indian journalist he said under the parliamentary system it was the prime minister who ran the show “and we have a parliamentary system in Pakistan”.

Replying to another question he said he believed the Pakistan government was making sincere efforts to unearth the Mumbai plot and its perpetrators, “I have stated again and again that it is in the interest of Pakistan and the region that we do this in the most transparent manner and do it so that even India should express its confidence in our findings.”