Opposition slams memoirs

Islamabad: While his book is selling briskly at home and abroad, President General Pervez Musharraf has come under fire from the opposition parties, accusing him of divulging state secrets and indulging in self-glorification.

Musharraf, who launched In the Line of Fire in New York on Monday has reportedly said he plans to donate part of his book proceeds for poverty alleviation and social upliftment in Pakistan. The president, who is also army chief, has dedicated the book to the people of the country.

A spokesman for exiled Nawaz Sharif said in a statement from London that the general had made personal attacks on the former prime minister and lied about the Kargil disaster and the coup in 1999.

Describing the book as anti-Pakistan and a pack of lies aimed at rewriting history, the spokesman, Nadir Chaudhri, said the general seemed to have decided to make some money, realising that his "political demise was near".

Chaudhri condemned what he called the maligning of nuclear hero Dr A.Q. Khan by Musharraf in his book and said it was reprehensible and unprecedented that an army chief had presented such a negative image of Pakistan.

He said the general's explanation for his post-9/11 decision to take a U-turn on Afghanistan had exposed his decision-making process as seriously limited, flawed and defeatist.

Sharif's PML-N said the general's revelation that the CIA had paid millions of dollars to Pakistan for capturing and handing over Al Qaida operatives had come as a humiliation for the country.

Being a public servant Musharraf could not write a book and disclose national secrets, said a PML-N leader, Chaudhry Nisar Ali Khan, asking Musharraf to tell the nation where that money had gone.

PML-N information secretary Ahsan Iqbal said what the general had written constituted a charge-sheet against himself. "Musharraf has betrayed the nation by revealing national secrets," he said.

A spokesman for former prime minister Benazir Bhutto's Pakistan Peoples Party said the book raised moral and political questions. Farhatullah Babar said, "It has set a new and dangerous precedent for the chiefs of air force and navy to also record their memoirs while in service and then take official jets to set out on tour to Europe and America on promotion campaigns."

The PPP spokesman said the general's visit to US along with a dozen ministers was less for promoting national interests than for boosting the sale of his book.

At best, Babar said, the book was a one-sided version of critical events namely nuclear proliferation, war on terror, the Kargil conflict and the October 12, 1999 military takeover.

Hafiz Hussain Ahmad, a central leader of Muttahida Majlis Amal (MMA) religious alliance, regretted Gen Musharraf had revealed certain army secrets, besides narrating the incidents of his "cowardice". After having claimed for years that Pakistan's decision to support the war on terror was a principled stand, the general had now admitted that it was because of the US threat.