IHT : Sharif declares that he is 'willing to pay that price'

Sharif declares that he is 'willing to pay that price'

By Carlotta Gall | September 10, 2007

ISLAMABAD: In an interview just hours before he was arrested here and flown out of the country, former Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif vowed that even being jailed would not stop his efforts to end the rule of his bitter rival, General Pervez Musharraf.

"I don't know what will happen to me when I get to Islamabad," Sharif, 57, said in an interview on the plane from London. "He might arrest me, he might take me straight to jail," he said of Musharraf.

"Even if he takes me to jail, and in return my country gets liberated from the scourge of dictatorship, it is not a big price to pay. I am happy and willing to pay that price."

He added, "I am not fearful; I am fearless."

Sharif's government was overthrown by General Musharraf in a coup in 1999, and he was imprisoned for 18 months before he was sent into exile in 2000. This was his first trip back to Pakistan. Before leaving Heathrow airport in London on Sunday, he made an emotional farewell to his brother Shahbaz Sharif, who had originally planned to return with him.

But at the last minute, Nawaz Sharif told him to stay behind so that at least one of them could carry on political work in freedom.

"There was a need for someone to hold the fort," Sharif said on the flight. "If something were to happen to me in Pakistan, someone should have constant contact with the party and with the All Pakistan Democratic Movement."

Sharif heads the umbrella Democratic Movement, which has called for a conference of all parties to agree to an interim government and conditions for free and fair elections. His party has called for discussions with all sides, but has stressed that it will not contemplate any role for Musharraf in a future government. Yet Sharif's last words on the plane were for reconciliation with his old rival.

"I go back with a message of hope," he said. "I go back with a message of national consensus, of national reconciliation, and I think Mr. Musharraf should respond positively to this message."

Sharif upset the political scene in Pakistan by announcing his return after the Supreme Court ruled last month that he and his brother had an inalienable right to return to their country.

In an arrangement brokered by Saudi Arabia in 2000, Sharif had agreed to stay out of Pakistan and out of politics for 10 years in return for exile and having a life sentence for hijacking and corruption commuted.

On the plane, Sharif denounced the lack of democracy in Pakistan.

"It's a final battle now between dictatorship and democracy," he said. "Civil society is there now struggling for the restoration of the rule of law, the judiciary is today independent. I think it is about time that we put an end to this menace of dictatorship because it had inflicted so much damage to my country.

"Mr. Musharraf does not believe in the rule of law," he said. "He tries to bulldoze everything that comes in his way."

On Saturday, an envoy from Saudi Arabia, Prince Maqran bin Abdel Aziz, and the Lebanese leader Saad Hariri, who was involved in helping Sharif swap imprisonment for exile in 2000, called on Sharif not to return to the country at a news conference in Pakistan.

"Mr. Musharraf is doing the biggest disservice to Pakistan by dragging a friendly country like Saudi Arabia into this controversy," Sharif said.

Sharif stressed that his alliance with opposition parties, including a coalition of religious parties, was aimed at a return to democracy rather than any other agenda. He said he also still stood by an earlier agreement with Benazir Bhutto, another former prime minister and opposition leader who has been livingin self-imposed exile during Musharraf's regime, that was aimed at seeking a return to a parliamentary democracy, he said.

"My struggle is for the restoration of democracy, for the rule law, for the independence of the judiciary and the freedom of the press. I think this is a highly democratic agenda, it is not an agenda set out by any Islamist party,"

He denied that he would be any less of a friend to the United States than Musharraf, often described as a great ally in the United States-led campaign against terrorism. He said the track record of his party, the Pakistan Muslim League, and his two times prime minister were proof of his liberal, free-market policies.

"We are a forward looking party, a party with a liberal agenda," he said.

And he warned that the United States should cease propping up General Musharraf. "President Bush is somehow supporting an individual who today has become a symbol of hatred in Pakistan, a man whom everybody in Pakistan wants to get rid of," he warned. "I don't know why Mr. Bush is still supporting this man. He must not equate Pakistan with Mr. Musharraf. He should have his friendship with the people of Pakistan, not with an individual who is becoming more and more unpopular in the country."

He said he planned to mobilize public support to end Musharraf's rule in the same way that massive public support helped win the reinstatement of the chief justice, who was suspended by Musharraf in March and fought a five-month battle against his dismissal, supported by countrywide rallies, finally winning his job back in July.

"Nobody expected the chief justice to be reinstated by popular will," he said. "The angry public who came out on the streets made it possible. That was a humiliating defeat for Mr. Musharraf. The people's power is there and no dictator can withstand that power. I think I am going to mobilize that power further, mobilize the people further, to fight a decisive battle against dictatorship. This is my mission now."

He said the government had already moved against him, rounding up "thousands" of supporters in recent days, raiding their homes at night, and preparing to seal the roads to Islamabad airport to prevent them rallying to greet him on his arrival at Islamabad airport Monday morning.

Anticipating trouble, party officials made block bookings from London for Sharif and his aides and accompanying journalists on Pakistan Airlines and Gulf Air, and only at the last minute announced which flight Sharif was taking. He said he chose the Pakistan government airline in the end because Musharraf could have asked other countries to cancel or divert the nondirect flights, but if he interfered with the Pakistan Airlines direct flight he would be contravening the Supreme Court ruling recognizing his right to return.

"That would be a clear violation of the word of the Supreme Court that says there should be no action taken by the government to prevent Nawaz Sharif's entry into Pakistan," he said. "So if Musharraf does that, his action will be highly contemptuous of the Supreme Court." "Look at the way that this dictator is afraid of one man," he said. "He is holding the gun, I am talking about democracy. He is afraid of a man who talks about democracy."