Kargil ceasefire at Musharraf's insistence: Sharif

NEW DELHI: Former Pakistani prime minister Nawaz Sharif has claimed that he called for a ceasefire to end the Kargil war in 1999 after Army chief Pervez Musharraf "begged" him to do so.

Sharif, in an interview for a book "Gaddar Kaun", also scoffed at the "pull-out" by the Pakistani troops from Kargil saying they had "lost everything."

He admitted Pakistan made a "request" to militants to withdraw from Kargil only to "show to the world" that Pakistani troops had not occupied the icy heights in Jammu and Kashmir.

"The fact is that when Musharraf's misadventure failed miserably, this commando general came to me to get the war ceased at any cost," Sharif told author Suhail Warraich in an interview for an updated edition of the book which was released in Pakistan on Friday.

The former premier said that US General Anthony Zinni's book "verifies this claim of mine". "His testimony clearly says that it was the army chief and not the prime minister, who wanted the ceasefire," Sharif said.

Sharif refuted Musharraf's claims that international pressure over Kargil had demoralised him. "It is an interesting claim ... I was not demoralised by the international pressure.... first, he begged me for a ceasefire and then bade me farewell at the Chaklala Airport for Washington," the then premier said.

Sharif claims that after the first phase of his meeting with the then US President Bill Clinton, he came to know that India had recaptured Tiger Hill from Pakistani troops.

"You have lost everything already, now what should I talk about," Sharif claims to have told Musharraf during a telephone conversation from Washington.

Sharif said that he made the announcement asking the mujahideen to withdraw from the occupied heights at the advise of his military secretary to show the world that it were they who had captured the Karil peaks.

When the mujahideen were formally requested to pull out from the peaks at a meeting called by the ISI, a militant commander asked "where this Kargil was. This triggered laughter," Sharif said.

The former premier said that he appointed Musharraf as the army chief on the advise of defence secretary Iftikhar Ali Khan. "... Khan told me that Musharraf worshipped me as his hero. He advised me to appoint Musharraf as the army chief," Sharif said.