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'Nawaz Sharief will return to Pakistan'

Will former Pakistani prime minister Nawaz Sharief, now exiled in Saudi Arabia and whose democratically elected government was ousted in a military coup in October 1999 by General Pervez Musharraf, ever return to the country of his birth?

A resounding "Yes", says his youngest son Hassan Nawaz, who also denies that the passports of his father and family have been confiscated by the Saudi authorities.

According to Hassan, who met Pakistani-American journalists at Oh's Palace, a Pakistani-Chinese restaurant in Alexandria, Virginia, the passports of Nawaz Sharief, his brother Shahbaz Sharief, former chief minister of Punjab, and other members of the Sharief family were never confiscated by the Saudi government and each member of the family is free to travel in and outside the kingdom.

While acknowledging that the Sharief brothers were keeping a low profile, he said they would emerge again and return to Pakistan at the right time, to take part in the country's politics after they draft a new political strategy.

Hassan, who said he was sent to Washington from London by his father to celebrate the third anniversary of Pakistan's Nuclear Weapons Day (May 28) along with over 200 Pakistan Muslim League activists in the United States, asserted that many false and fabricated stories had been planted in the Pakistani press against the Sharief family by the Inter-Services Intelligence, the Intelligence Bureau, the government-controlled Associated Press of Pakistan and Pakistan's ministry of information and media development.

He said the Saudi government, as some reports had indicated, had not given any guarantee to the military junta in Islamabad that either of the Sharief brothers would eschew Pakistani politics for 10 to 21 years. Hassan denied that the Saudis had provided any such written or verbal guarantees to the Musharraf administration.

Hassan also denied that either his father or uncle had ever signed any apology statement [mafinama] or mercy petition to facilitate his exile to Saudi Arabia and challenged the Musharraf regime to provide copies of any such exile documents signed by the former prime minister or his brother to the press and the public.

Sharief and his family were exiled to Saudi Arabia on December 10, 2000, after he was convicted on charges of conspiring to hijack a Pakistan International Airlines aircraft flying from Colombo, Sri Lanka, to Karachi and kidnap Musharraf and the other passengers; of practising state terrorism; and of indulging in corruption and fraud.

At the time, the US heaved a sigh of relief, but denied it had facilitated Nawaz's exile to Saudi Arabia.

State department officials said Washington had played no part in the exile deal, but had only implored the Musharraf regime not to hang Sharief as former military dictator Mohammad Zia-ul-Haq had done to former Pakistani prime minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto.

Hassan said there were no major differences between his father or uncle over property or political issues, as had been widely reported in the Pakistani media, but alleged that after the ouster of the Nawaz Sharief government, Musharraf had clandestinely made a top-secret offer to Shahbaz Sharief to be Pakistan's next prime minister.

But, he added, his uncle had rejected this offer, refusing to cut any deal with the army, and was willing to return with his brother to rule Pakistan once again, if elected by the Pakistanis.

Hassan said if Shahbaz Sharief was elected prime minister, his father would welcome the people's decision and support him.

He alleged that his father's government was overthrown by the military led by Musharraf primarily because Sharief had withdrawn the Pakistani troops and mujahideen who had infiltrated into Kargil.

On July 4, 1999, President Bill Clinton summoned Nawaz Sharief to the White House and ordered him to immediately withdraw Pakistan troops and mercenaries, backed by Islamabad, who had infiltrated into Indian territory and threatened to set off a full-scale war between the neighbours.

At the time, it was widely believed that the chief architect of the Kargil invasion was Musharraf.

Hassan, who said that during his father's tenure as prime minister, he too had met several "ministers" of the Clinton administration, denied that the Central Intelligence Agency had been responsible for keeping the regime in power or for its ultimate ouster.

He also said the PML, Pakistanis and Kashmiris would never allow Musharraf to sell out Kashmir during his forthcoming meeting with Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee of India or to sign the discriminatory Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty.

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