E-Paper
Musharraf forced Sharif to withdraw troops from Kargil
PML-N's Siddiqul Farooq says had been a delay in calling back the troops, India would have made Kargil a graveyard of Pakistani troops.
Former Pakistan Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif was reluctant to withdraw troops from the Kargil heights during the skirmish against India between March and July 1999, but Chief of Army Staff Pervez Musharraf forced him to withdraw.
According to PML-N leader Siddiqul Farooq, Sharif visited the United States at Musharraf's insistence to 'save the Pakistan Army and the so-called Mujhahideen from a humiliating defeat' at the hands of the Indian Army.
Launching his book Kargil - Adventure or Trap at the Karachi Press Club here, Farooq is quoted by The Nation as saying that if there had been a delay of one week in calling back the troops, India would have made Kargil a graveyard of Pakistani troops.
The book discloses that Musharraf admitted to defeat in his two meetings with Sharif at the Prime Minister's House on June 2 and in Lahore on June 13, 1999, requesting him to find a diplomatic solution to the Kargil war through the intervention of the then US President Bill Clinton.
The book also says that an agreement for the withdrawal of the Northern Light Infantry troops and Mujahideen from Tiger Heights, Batalik and Marpola in Kargil sector had been reached during a meeting between General Anthony Zinni, the commander of the US Pacific Command and Musharraf on June 26, 1999.
However, Sharif was opposed to the plan and wanted that Pakistani troops fight it out until the war created room for a respectable and honourable withdrawal of troops.
Zinni in his book Battle Ready brought this fact on record that Sharif was reluctant to withdraw troops from Kargil, and that Musharraf forced him to do it.
