Efforts to restore democracy in Pakistan received a setback due to Pakistan People's Party leader Benazir Bhutto's "negotiations" with General Pervez Musharraf, former premier Nawaz Sharif has said while ruling out any patch up with the military ruler.
"The country is suffering at the hands of the dictator who is doing great damage to the Pakistan nation," Sharif told PTI last evening in a telephone interview from Saudi Arabia where he was deported in September hours after returning to his home country from a seven-year exile.
Asked about Bhutto, who returned to Pakistan apparently under a deal with Musharraf, Sharif said, "I will never talk with a military dictator."
Sharif, Bhutto and other Pakistan opposition leaders had signed a charter for restoration of democracy. Sharif said efforts to restore democracy in Pakistan received a "setback" after Bhutto, who "negotiated" with Musharraf, abandoned the deal with opposition leaders.
The Pakistan Muslim League (N) leader said unless he was able to return to Pakistan as Bhutto had been allowed to do, parliamentary elections promised in January would be a "farce".
Asked if he believed that the president will fulfill his promise of holding the general election, Sharif said pressure from the US is slowly showing result but he would agree to nothing short of restoration of the judiciary as it was before the imposition of emergency.
"What we need is the reinstatement of the judiciary to November 2, 2007. We want emergency and the Provisional Constitutional Order to be lifted," he said, adding that just holding elections will not be enough.
Describing the current emergency law as the worst "martial law we have ever seen in Pakistan", Sharif said, "I pray to God that I can go back to Pakistan as it is the right time for me to join in the struggle of the people of his country."
The two-time prime minister said, "People of Pakistan would never compromise on their rights and the supremacy of the Constitution."
Asked if he was in talks with Saudi Arabia, which brokered a deal for his exile, for returning home, Sharif said he is in touch with his hosts.
"Insha Allah, I want to return home soon," he said. Asked if he is planning to return in mid-November, he said, "You will hear the good news soon."
Sharif said he had spoken to Bhutto immediate after the October 18 suicide attack that targeted her on her homecoming from self exile in Dubai.
News reports said Bhutto phoned PML-N leaders in Jeddah and asked to meet them after arriving in Dubai.
Sharif then sent Senator Ishaq Dar to meet her. According to a channel, following the Bhutto-Dar meeting, there is a possibility of a one-on-one meeting between Bhutto and Sharif.
Calling the imposition of emergency an extra-constitutional step, Sharif, who was ousted by Musharraf in a bloodless coup in 1999, said the general imposed emergency when he could have been disqualified under the Constitution for the office of president.
"In 1999, he imposed martial law to save his army chief position and now he has imposed martial law again to save his office of president," Sharif said.
"The whole action of imposing emergency and the PCO was to get rid of the judges who acted independently," he said.
The former prime minister said the people of Pakistan were hopeful for democracy after the growing role of an independent judiciary and free media.
He said the country would struggle to bring back the Constitution.
"The whole nation salutes the judges who have refused to take oath under General Musharraf's new law. The arrests of numerous lawyers, civil society activists, and PML-N workers and closing down the transmission of independent TV channels is clear proof that General Musharraf can't face the nation," Sharif said from Jeddah where he has spent the last seven years in exile.