By Prasun Sonwalkar, IANS
London : Former Pakistan prime minister Nawaz Sharif has been booked on multiple flights out of London to his country Sunday night, his aides said, so that the government did not have specific information where and when he would arrive.
Sharif, is expected to reach Islamabad Monday morning. Reports from Pakistan say he is likely to be arrested on arrival, but this has not deterred an increasingly belligerent Sharif from returning home. His brother Shahbaz will also travel with him.
Speaking to newspersons hours before leaving London, Sharif said: “If America is pushing democracy in Iraq and Afghanistan, why should it be supporting a uniformed dictator in Pakistan? We all want good relations with the US, but they are supporting a dictator against the wishes of 160 million Pakistanis and that’s wrong.
“Musharraf has been hoodwinking the Americans. Far from standing up to the militants he’s the one who created the vacuum for the mullahs to fill. Musharraf needs the threat of terror for his own survival, so he can claim to Washington that he must stay on as he’s the only one who can control it.
“In fact it will never be controlled by him as we saw with the Red Mosque. Dictatorships are ideal breeding grounds for extremism and terrorism.
“I can’t describe in words the emotion I feel about going home. I had never been away from my country before for more than two weeks.”
Sharif, who was unceremoniously ousted in a coup by President Pervez Musharraf in 1999, admitted that he was taken by surprise when courts in Pakistan ruled that as a citizen he had an inalienable right to return. He said he and his brother expected a favourable reply, but “not so quickly”.
From his Park Lane apartment in central London, Sharif has made himself accessible to the international media, freely giving interviews to journalists and television channels. He has often spoken to Indian television channels on camera and by phone.
Speaking to The Sunday Times, Sharif claimed that he, like former prime minister Benazir Bhutto, had been approached by emissaries of Musharraf: “I would not deviate from my principles. I don’t want to strengthen the hands of a dictator – I want undiluted democracy.”
He pointed out that both he and Bhutto had signed a Charter of Democracy in May last year which “clearly states there can be no parleys or deal-making with dictators. I’m dismayed and disappointed (that she has reneged on this).
“She came to my house in Jeddah, then we met here in London and I thought we’d buried the past. It was time for all democrats to join together. To have one of us take the other course and start supporting the dictator for personal reasons is too bad.”
Bhutto had been in talks with Musharraf on a power sharing deal that would have seen him continuing in office. These parleys have now collapsed.
Sharif said that he wished he and Bhutto returned together as had been originally planned. “It would have been great,” he said, shaking his head. “We would have been unstoppable.”
Sharif insisted he will be tough on terrorism and expel Taliban members from Pakistani soil if he comes to power. He said: “Pakistan must never again allow anyone to use its territory for promoting terrorism. It is very painful to read all these things about Pakistan becoming a training ground for terrorists.
“I’d like to see a forward-looking progressive Pakistan, not a country associated with terror.”