Pakistan News and Discussion-8

[Naresh]

<b>Mudy Ji :</b>

Some further reading from the Pakistani Press :

[center]<b><span style='font-size:14pt;line-height:100%'>Kargil : need for a probe</span></b>[/center]

MORE than seven years after the Kargil crisis rocked South Asia, it remains a mystery on this side of the border. Normally, there should have been two versions — the Pakistani and the Indian. The Indian version is known to us: many Indians, civilians and retired generals, have written about it from both political and military points of view and in the process have sought to establish the truth behind what for the Indians was initially a shock. Later, the Indian government appointed a four-member committee to determine what caused the debacle from their point of view, especially the failure of the Indian intelligence to get wind of Pakistan’s plans to move into the Kargil heights. Establishing the truth on the Indian side was easy, because there was only one party that was in overall command and that was the civilian government; the military merely carried the orders. <b>On this side of the border, however, the task of ascertaining the truth is difficult because there were two centres of power.</b> President Pervez Musharraf has all along insisted that all parties, including the civilian authority, were on board. However, Mr Nawaz Sharif, who was then prime minister, insists that he was kept in the dark, and that the army planned the operations on its own. <b>The publication of two books — Mr Sharif’s Ghaddar Kaun and the general’s In the Line of Fire — have only made the confusion worse confounded, <span style='font-size:14pt;line-height:100%'>with the truth being a major casualty.</span></b> This only strengthens the need for an impartial inquiry into the misadventure that Kargil was.

The people should know whose brainchild it was, what exactly was the broad strategic aim behind what in isolation appeared to be an astute tactical operation and, finally, what led to the retreat. <b>The military blames the withdrawal from the heights on a prime minister who had succumbed to American pressure; <span style='font-size:14pt;line-height:100%'>Mr Sharif insists that the army pleaded with him to seek American intercession to ensure a Kargil ceasefire.</span></b> <!--emo&:flush--><img src='style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/Flush.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='Flush.gif' /><!--endemo--> Let the government appoint a retired judge of the Supreme Court to hold a thorough investigation and let the nation know the truth about Kargil.

Cheers <!--emo&:beer--><img src='style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/cheers.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='cheers.gif' /><!--endemo-->