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Sharief was 'kept in dark about Kargil'

''Who calls the shots in Pakistan?'' This is the question which is being discussed within and outside the country in the wake of the Pak-supported intrusion in the Kargil-Drass sectors.

This week the New York Times discussed reports about Kargil being an exclusive handiwork of the Pakistani army and commented that Prime Minister Nawaz Sharief ''faces a major challenge in demonstrating that he, not the military, runs the country.''

Kamran Khan, who heads the intelligence unit at The News , wrote that the operation was carried out in strict secrecy which was not shared fully even with corps commanders initially. Sharief felt left out and upset.

It was early this week that Sharief had two long meetings with services chiefs and decided that militants, who had captured strategically high peaks in Kargil, must continue to receive Pakistan's backing -- a fact that Islamabad is now desperately trying to deny outside the country.

Kamran Khan wrote that the prime minister was ''personally concerned'' that developments in Kargil might derail his peace initiative with India. ''Ever since his election and especially after the Lahore Declaration was signed in February by Sharief and his Indian counterpart Atal Bihari Vajpayee, extremist elements in Pakistan have looked for a way to undermine the peace dialogue,'' Khan quoted director of Institute for Strategic Studies (London) General D Segal as writing.

Kamran Khan quoted a source close to the prime minister as saying that ''Sharief was in no mood to take the credit for the Kargil situation and he personally opposed some suggestions that he should gain some political capital from Mujahedeen's success in Kashmir.''

UNI

The Kargil Crisis

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