Islamabad, September 28: Dismissing reports of a safe exit “deal”, former military ruler Pervez Musharraf has said he did not resign as President or leave Pakistan under the terms of any secret agreement.
“I neither quit the government nor left the country under any deal,” Musharraf, who is currently in the US for a lecture tour, told reporters in Virginia.
Musharraf quit as President of Pakistan in August last year. He left Pakistan in mid-April and has been living abroad since then.
Following a Supreme Court ruling declaring the 2007 emergency imposed by him as illegal and unconstitutional, Musharraf faces the possibility of being put on trial for treason on his return to Pakistan.
Musharraf also said he had allowed former premier Benazir Bhutto to return to Pakistan from self-imposed exile in 2007 as no corruption charges were proved against her. He said former premier Nawaz Sharif and his brother Shahbaz, who were also in exile at the time, had tried to pressurise the government through Saudi Arabia for returning to Pakistan.
He said he had urged Bhutto not to return to Pakistan as there were terror threats to her life but she opted to travel to the country and the extremists “succeeded in their evil designs”. Bhutto was assassinated in a gun and bomb attack in December 2007.
Musharraf said he had planned to hold elections in 2007 but could not do so due to the judicial crisis that was sparked by the move to sack Supreme Court Chief Justice Iftikhar Chaudhry.
He said the people had supported measures taken during his tenure. He said he was not criticising the current Pakistan People’s Party-led government and was busy with improving Pakistan’s image abroad.
—Agencies