Musharraf advised against Kargil, says Benazir

Staff Report

LAHORE: Former prime minister Benazir Bhutto on Tuesday said President Pervez Musharraf had brought the Kargil plan to her when she was prime minister and he was the director general of Military Operations.

“Kargil was an absolute disaster,” Benazir said in an interview with the Third Eye Television.

“I asked Gen Musharraf what would happen after the execution of his plan. He said he would hoist the flag of Pakistan atop the Srinagar Assembly. I vetoed the plan because I knew we would have to surrender the territory when it would come to the international community and that’s exactly what happened.”

“So, I wish he had listened to me and not got lost in the brilliance of the military strategy,” she said.

During her tenure as prime minister, Benazir said, there were no non-Kashmiri groups involved in “the Kashmiri insurgency”.

“Kashmir was an issue during my tenure, but there was a noticeable difference. There were no attacks like the one on the Indian Parliament.”

She said, “Taliban regrouped under Musharraf’s watch and militants started dictating to the government of Pakistan on foreign policy matters. The ratio of blasts in Indian-held Kashmir also increased.”

Asked how she would have responded to Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee’s peace efforts, she said, “We (the Pakistan People’s Party) would have stopped militants from dictating foreign policy. In fact we would have been deeply concerned about the fact that Al Qaeda elements were entering our country and we would have made the situation very difficult for them to either take refuge in Pakistan or regroup.”

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