Sharif likely to see 'highest Saudi authorities'

Islamabad: Exiled former prime minister Nawaz Sharif's wife Kulsum Nawaz said yesterday that her husband would meet the highest Saudi authorities in the next couple of days, a meeting that could turn the tables on Pakistan's military regime.

Talking to private television news channel Geo from her London residence Kulsum said: "Nawaz Sharif will meet the highest Saudi authorities within two days and will discuss the actual status of the agreement".

"The final decisions would be surprising."

Kulsum also spoke at length about "the slips between the cup and the lip" in 2000 when the agreement was made and elaborated about how it happened and on whose behalf.

She said President Pervez Musharraf was uneasy about her being in active politics and quoted Sa'ad Hariri to explain his (Musharraf's) disgust towards her.

"Take this woman first and then the other members of the Sharif family, she is pain in the neck for us," Kulsum recalled Hariri's words as was conveyed to him by Musharraf when Sharif family were asked to pack up for Jeddah.

She said Musharraf made this observation when she refused to accompany other family members as she was busy in political activities and was not bound honour any agreement.

No commitment

"I neither signed any agreement nor I was in some verbal commitment with any authority to leave," she claimed.

Kulsum said Hariri was not the first foreign friend, who suggested a pardon deal. "Musharraf's government changed strategy after Sharifs' refusal to any compromise with him.

They approached Nawaz's father Mian Mohammad Sharif who was very old and sick in those days. Military dictators thought that an old father would be frightened by the threat of hanging his sons," she said.

Hariri came on the scene as a representative of the Saudi royal family after even Sharif senior refused any compromise.