ISLAMABAD, Pakistan,
Nov. 27 — The Pakistani president, Gen. Pervez
Musharraf, conducted what the Pakistani military
said was a round of farewell calls to the country's
armed forces today, a day before officials say he
will relinquish his role of chief of the army.
Pakistan's top officials
said on Monday that after giving up his uniform
General Musharraf would be sworn in as a civilian
president in Islamabad on Thursday. That would be a
belated, though significant, concession to both his
political opposition here and supporters in the Bush
administration who have demanded it as an important
step toward restoring civilian rule.
Today, General Musharraf
visited the Joint Chief of Staff headquarters, where
he was received by the chairman of the Joint Chiefs
of Staff Committee, Gen. Tariq Majeed, the military
said in a statement. Later, he visited the naval
headquarters and the air headquarters.
However, General
Musharraf's opponents have made clear that the step
to give up his military role may not be enough to
appease his critics.
Former Prime Minister
Nawaz Sharif, who has returned to Pakistan after an
eight-year absence to make a challenge in
parliamentary elections scheduled for January,
condemned General Musharraf for imposing emergency
rule on Nov. 3.
Mr. Sharif said he would
not serve as prime minister under a Musharraf
presidency, demanded an end to the state of
emergency and called for the reinstatement of fired
Supreme Court justices.
Mr. Sharif was tossed
out of power by General Musharraf in a 1999 coup.
Such a forceful stand contrasts in many respects to
Mr. Sharif's own time as prime minister. He is best
remembered here and in Washington as the leader who
brought the world a nuclear Pakistan, flirted with
war with India and forged strong ties with religious
conservatives. His tenure was marred by charges of
rampant corruption and by confrontations with the
courts and the media as well.
Mr. Sharif's return to
Pakistan now is likely to stir deep unease in the
Bush administration, which has stood with General
Musharraf as its best bet in the fight against
terrorism, said Daniel Markey, a senior fellow at
the Council on Foreign Relations who until recently
dealt with Pakistan issues at the State Department.
Nonetheless, Washington
appears to have taken a back seat, or at least a
stance of resignation at the inevitable, as the
Saudis, perhaps Pakistan's most revered ally,
engineered the return of Mr. Sharif, Mr. Markey
said.
Not least, Mr. Sharif's
return complicates the Bush administration's support
for Benazir Bhutto, another former prime minister
and opposition leader, whom Washington has favored
as a more secular politician, and a more certain
partner against Islamic extremists.
Officials in Washington
and London promoted her return from exile in October
as a way to put a friendlier face on General
Musharraf's increasingly unpopular military regime.
While Ms. Bhutto and Mr.
Sharif are known to detest the general, they detest
each other as well. Whether they can form a cohesive
opposition against General Musharraf before
parliamentary elections set for Jan. 8 is far from
clear.
While Mr. Sharif said he
would not take part in the elections unless the
emergency rule was lifted, he went ahead to meet the
Monday deadline for filing nominating papers for the
election.
As prime minister twice
— from 1990 to 1993 and from 1997 to 1999 — he is
remembered by Pakistanis as the leader who decided
to test Pakistan's nuclear weapons in response to
India's nuclear tests in 1998. It was an immensely
popular decision among Pakistanis, and ever since
Mr. Sharif has been remembered as the leader who
stood up to the world and showed off Pakistan's
nuclear prowess.
But that step won him
little favor in Washington. President Clinton tried
to persuade Mr. Sharif to hold back, appealing to
his vanity with an offer of a state dinner at the
White House and to his country's pocket with
billions of dollars in aid, according to Bruce
Riedel, the member of the National Security Council
who dealt with Pakistan at the time.
For some secular
Pakistanis, Mr. Sharif's return forebodes a
strengthening of the religious right, which already
has more seats in Parliament than when he was prime
minister.
"For me this is a fight
between Wahhabism and secular values," said Fasih
Ahmed, 30, a businessman from Mr. Sharif's political
base in Lahore, in a reference to the conservative
strain of Islam favored by Saudi Arabia. "Nawaz is
extremely close to the religious right."
Mr. Sharif displayed his
religious leanings during his second term when he
tried to introduce Shariah, Islamic law, with a bill
that gave the prime minister, and not the courts,
the power to enforce religious edicts.
The legislation passed
the lower house. But the bill ultimately failed in
the Senate despite unusual visits by religious
leaders, organized by Mr. Sharif's political party,
to the Senate chamber to press members for its
passage.
As much as Mr. Sharif
railed against General Musharraf on Monday for
meddling with the Supreme Court, as prime minister,
Mr. Sharif did so as well.
In his second term, Mr.
Sharif opposed some of the appointees to the court
made by the chief justice at the time, Sajjad Ali
Shah. At one point a mob organized by his party, and
including cabinet ministers, broke into the Supreme
Court building in the capital, Islamabad.
They upended furniture
and chased Mr. Shah out of the courtroom before
being treated to afternoon tea by Mr. Sharif's
brother, Shahbaz Sharif, who was the chief minister
of Punjab, Pakistan's most populous province.
"It still haunted us
that our government stormed the Supreme Court, it
was definitely a stigma," said Khawaja Mohammed Asif,
a member of Mr. Sharif's cabinet at the time.
The Sharif government
was not known as a friend of the news media, either.
In an effort to squelch
a newspaper that was critical of Mr. Sharif, Najam
Sethi, editor in chief of The Daily Times, was
arrested in the middle of the night from his home in
1999 by government agents, gagged, held for almost a
month, and threatened with charges of tax evasion
and sedition. At the time, Mr. Sethi had written
about Mr. Sharif's "obsession with total power."
For Washington, the
pivotal encounter with Mr. Sharif came with the
tense meeting between Mr. Sharif and President
Clinton on July 4, 1999.
The episode involved the
possibility of nuclear war over the escalation of
the conflict between Pakistan and India in May 1999
in the contested area of Kashmir.
Pakistani-backed Kashmir
militants and regular army units had advanced into
an area known as Kargil, a remote part of the
Himalayas. The forces had gained significant
tactical control and were threatening India's
traditional positions.
There was "disturbing
information about Pakistan preparing its nuclear
arsenal for possible use," wrote Mr. Riedel, the
National Security Council official who was with Mr.
Clinton at the talks, and wrote a published account
afterward.
Mr. Sharif had appealed
to Mr. Clinton for help and rushed to Washington on
short notice, according to Mr. Riedel, because he
was unsure of his standing with the army, which was
led by General Musharraf, the man Mr. Sharif had
picked for the job.
The prime minister
himself was afraid that the army's actions in
Kashmir would start a war with India, said Mr.
Riedel, who is now a senior fellow at the Brookings
Institution in Washington.
In Washington, Mr.
Sharif was actually greeted at Dulles airport by the
Saudi ambassador at the time, Prince Bandar bin
Sultan, who was asked by President Clinton to weigh
in with the prime minister, who appeared worried for
his life, Mr. Riedel wrote.
But as the talks got
under way, Mr. Sharif was initially unforthcoming
with Mr. Clinton about how to solve the situation.
Mr. Clinton became
angry, complaining that Pakistan had promised but
failed to bring Osama bin Laden to justice from
Afghanistan, Mr. Riedel recounted. Mr. Sharif had
allowed Inter-Services Intelligence, Pakistan's main
intelligence agency, to work with the Taliban to
foment terrorism, Mr. Clinton told him.
The president got
specific about the nuclear threat: "Did Sharif order
the Pakistani nuclear missile force to prepare for
action? Did he realize how crazy that was?" Mr.
Clinton effectively asked, according to Mr. Riedel.
"You've put me in the middle today, set the U.S. up
to fail and I won't let it happen. Pakistan is
messing with nuclear war."
Mr. Sharif denied that
he had ordered the preparation of the nuclear
weapons, Mr. Riedel said.
By the end of the
discussions, Mr. Sharif agreed to order his army to
pull back its men and its allies and "to do the
right thing for Pakistan and the world," Mr. Riedel
said. But, "he was not sure his army would see it
that way."
Three months later, it
was clear the army did not agree, and Mr. Sharif was
out of his job.
In October, Mr. Sharif
tried to move against General Musharraf by denying
the general's plane permission to land in Pakistan
on its return from a trip to Sri Lanka. The military
rebelled and opened the airport in Karachi, and
General Musharraf had Mr. Sharif arrested and put in
jail.
In a footnote to the
saga, Mr. Riedel recounts that Mr. Clinton urged
General Musharraf not to execute Mr. Sharif as
General Zia had executed Prime Minister Zulfikar Ali
Bhutto, father of Benazir Bhutto, in 1979.
"With our encouragement,
the Saudis pressed hard for Sharif's freedom," Mr.
Riedel said, and finally in December 2000 he was
sent into exile to the kingdom, from where he has
now returned.
Jane Perlez reported
from Islamabad. Graham Bowley reported from New
York.
