ISLAMABAD: Pakistan’s former premier, Nawaz Sharif, rejected the statement of the National Security Committee (NSC) on Tuesday in which the country’s top civil-military body described his controversial remarks on the November 2008 Mumbai attacks as “incorrect and misleading.”
The NSC statement is “painful and regrettable, and [it is] not based on facts,” said Sharif while talking to reporters outside an accountability court in Islamabad.
He said Pakistan had become isolated in the world, asking: “Who is responsible for bringing the country to its present state?”
“I am not just a Pakistani citizen,” he said. “People have elected me as prime minister and I know a lot of things.”
The former prime minister has been criticized for his interview published in Dawn newspaper on May 12 in which he highlighted the role of militant outfits in cross-border terrorism.
“Militant organizations are active. Call them non-state actors, should we allow them to cross the border and kill 150 people in Mumbai? Explain it to me. Why can’t we complete the trial?” Sharif had said in the interview.
The Indian media immediately played up his statement, describing it as an admission by the former premier that Pakistan was involved in the Mumbai attacks in which at least 160 people had lost their lives and about 300 others were injured.
After the controversy, Prime Minister Shahid Khaqan Abbasi called a meeting of the NSC in which Chief of Army Staff General Qamar Javed Bajwa, other services chiefs and key federal cabinet members participated to discuss Sharif’s statement.
“The participants observed that it was very unfortunate that the opinion arising out of either misconceptions or grievances was being presented in disregard of concrete facts and realities,” said a statement issued by the Prime Minister’s office after the NSC meeting.
The NSC participants also “unanimously rejected the allegations and condemned the fallacious assertions.”
However, Sharif said he had pointed out the same things in an NSC meeting in October 2016, but “at that time, this matter was turned into Dawn leaks.”
“Dawn leaks” was the name given to a story in Dawn newspaper about the meeting between the country’s civil and military leadership in which the former had allegedly claimed that Pakistan was facing the specter of international isolation.
The story had resulted in a political storm and the government had removed its Information Minister, Senator Pervaiz Rashid, for his negligence in getting the news published in the newspaper.
Talking to reporters on Tuesday, Maryam Nawaz, Sharif’s daughter, admitted that it was wrong to remove the minister from his position.
Abbasi on the second consecutive day defended the ousted premier’s remarks on the Mumbai attacks, saying that Sharif’s comments were “misreported and misinterpreted.”
The opposition parties in the National Assembly, however, rejected the prime minister’s clarification.
Hasan Askari Rizvi, a political analyst, said that Sharif was trying to put pressure on the military by making such statements, thinking that all his present troubles were due to the military and judiciary.
“He is trying to project himself as a democrat and peace-loving leader to the international establishment, but this is all domestic politics,” he said.
“Sharif is trying to make his narrative against the military and judiciary an election issue, but he is not getting the required response from the public by doing that,” he said.