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Gen Musharraf confirm Pak army captured land in Kargil

Pakistan's army chief General Parvez Musharraf now admits, after persistent denials, that his troops had captured Indian territory across the Line of Control in the Kargil sector in May.

Gen Musharraf blurted out this confession before tribals of the Bajaur agency in the North-West Frontier Province, claiming that his troops had captured 500 square kilometres of Indian territory across the LoC. ''But in the largest interest of the country, the armed forces were withdrawn from Kargil,'' he said.

The general boasted of Pakistani ''victory against the ten times more organised and equipped forces of India'' in Kargil, forgetting that all along Pakistan has denied its forces crossed the LoC.

Observers of the Pakistani scene, at a time when the Opposition has united to oust Prime Minister Nawaz Sharief, see more in Gen Musharraf's confession than a simple boast before the tribals. The sum total of the army chief's address was that Pakistani troops had achieved victory in Kargil, but they had to withdraw.

And that is the main case of the Opposition against the Sharief government. There are suspicions that some force is behind the sudden unity among the Opposition parties who until now were unwilling to agree on a single agenda against the government. Two days ago they agreed on one ''Nawaz go'' agenda, but not spelling out what would happen if Sharief goes.

A BBC correspondent from Islamabad, however, disagreed last night with a suggestion that the army is behind this sudden unity among the Opposition parties. According to him, it is inflation which has united the Opposition. But inflation prevailed before the Pakistani withdrawal from Kargil, too.

UNI

The Kargil Crisis

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