Islamabad: Former Pakistan prime minister Nawaz Sharif stated on Tuesday that Islamabad had "violated" a 1999 agreement with India inked by him and former prime minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee, in an apparent allusion to Gen Pervez Musharraf's Kargil misadventure.
The remarks came after Sharif was elected unopposed as the President of the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N), six years after he was disqualified by the country's Supreme Court.
"On May 28, 1998, Pakistan carried out five nuclear tests. After that Vajpayee Saheb came here and made an agreement with us. But we violated that agreement...it was our fault," Sharif was quoted as saying by PTI news agency.
On February 21, 1999, Sharif and Vajpayee signed the Lahore Declaration, which represented a significant achievement as it discussed a vision of stability and peace between the two nations. However, the Kargil conflict began a few months later as a result of Pakistani incursion into the Kargil area of Jammu and Kashmir.
Further, he took a dig at jailed former Prime Minister Imran Khan concerning Pakistan carrying out nuclear tests despite pressure from the United States. "President Bill Clinton had offered Pakistan USD 5 billion to stop it from carrying out nuclear tests but I refused. Had Imran Khan like a person been on my seat he would have accepted Clinton's offer," Sharif said.
