India Today magazine has an interview with Nawaz Sharif who more or less confirms what is already known. Little wonder that Musharraf goes to such lengths to keep this man out of Pakistan.
(Nawaz Sharief) also lamented that Vajpayee had started talks with the Pakistan government headed by a ‘military dictator’ and suggests that India should have ‘waited for a time when a democratic set-up came back’ in Islamabad.
“Initially, when the scuffle had started, Musharraf said it was the Mujahideen that was fighting in Kashmir, I thought since Mujahideen keep fighting, therefore, it is not a new phenomenon,” Sharief said in an interview to India Today magazine in its latest edition.
He revealed, “Later, I got a call from Vajpayee saab, saying ‘Nawaz saab, ye kya ho raha hai (Mr Nawaz, what is happening)? Your army is attacking our army. They are fighting our army’. I said there was no Pakistan Army fighting against his army… I suppose I should have known about all this. But frankly, I hadn’t been briefed.”
Noting that Vajpayee had asked him to pull back the army, as there was “a great pressure” on him to bring Indian troops out to the other sectors as well, Sharief said, “I thought this matter might become serious and this might be beginning of an open war between the two countries who had just detonated their nuclear bombs.”
“This would be disastrous. I think, Vajpayee also thought it would be very dangerous and that is why despite being under pressure from his army he didn’t bring his forces on the other sectors of the border,” he said. “I kept telling him ‘let us find a solution’.”
Sharief insisted: “It was Musharraf who behaved irresponsibly and it was he who planned the whole affair”. [Rediff]
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