ISLAMABAD, April 26: The central leadership of the Pakistan Muslim League-N, taking serious notice of President Gen Pervez Musharraf’s remarks about Mr Nawaz Sharif, resolved that the party would not permit the former to pursue his objectives.

In a meeting held here on Saturday, the PML-N leaders alleged that it was Gen Pervez Musharraf, who “begged former prime minister Nawaz Sharif” for appointment as Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Committee and also “begged Indian Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee for talks.”

The meeting was presided over by PML-N acting president Makhdoom Javaid Hashmi.

“How dare such a person use uncultured language against Nawaz Sharif who made Pakistan a nuclear power after rejecting foreign pressures,” the PML-N leaders said in a statement issued here on Saturday.

They alleged that “begging and prostrating” was the habit of Gen Pervez Musharraf and not of Nawaz Sharif, who endured his internment at Attack Fort with dignity, and when Gen Musharraf was forced by national and international pressure to exile him, the Sharif family kept a dignified attitude.

Mr Nawaz Sharif, after making Pakistan a nuclear power, they went on to say, had launched a result-oriented programme of getting the national economy rid of the clutches of the IMF and the World Bank and Gen Musharraf was aware of it.

However, Musharraf deprived the nation of that programme when he “ambushed the government of the people”, and reversed the process, they added.

The PML-N leaders claimed: “Gen Musharraf had been working against the interests of Pakistan and its 140 million people ... In fact, he had now become a burden for the country, and even wanted to turn the armed forces into a controversial institution with his assertion to remain in uniform.”