The Pakistan government will submit to the Supreme Court a secret deal that former prime minister Nawaz Sharif and his family reportedly struck with President General Pervez Musharraf for their exile to Saudi Arabia.
"We have a copy of the deal between the Sharif brothers and the government and we will submit it to the Supreme Court," said Chaudhry Shujaat Hussain, president of the ruling Pakistan Muslim League-Q.
The Pakistan government claims that the deal bars the deposed prime minister from entering Pakistan before the completion of a ten-year exile.
When asked about the identity of the signatories in the deal papers, Hussain said that all those who had left the country had signed the deal.
The Sharif brothers flew to Saudi Arabia in December 2000. The former prime minister has always denied striking any deal with Musharraf.
Meanwhile, the Saudi Embassy in Islamabad expressed its ignorance about the presence of any accord between Islamabad and Riyadh.
"The embassy has no information about any document or accord reached between the two countries in the year 2000, which bars the Sharif brothers from entering Pakistan for at least ten years," the Saudi embassy had stated on Thursday.
According to a document signed by Sharif before he was sent to Jeddah, none of the details of the deal about his ten-year exile existed on paper.
After a military coup toppled his government in 1999, Sharif was tried for various charges including corruption, tax evasion and embezzlement. The Sindh high court sentenced him to life.
The deposed premier was released only after Musharraf, in a letter to the then president Rafiq Tarar, advised him to remit the sentence.
Musharraf had claimed that Sharif was pardoned only after he promised to go on a ten-year exile.
While Sharif was granted pardon, none of the details of the Saudi royal family's willingness to provide an asylum to him and his family figured in the document.
The pardon was granted to Sharif overnight and his family flew to Saudi Arabia. Except the document, no other paper reflects an accord between the two sides.
Tarar has also denied having signed any such deal between Pakistan and Saudi Arabia.
The lack of a written document might make it difficult for the government to legally challenge Sharif's petition in the Supreme Court. In his petition, Sharif and his brother Shabaz claim that they were sent on a forced exile.
The petition seeks a judicial directive to the Pakistan government, asking it to allow the Sharif brothers to return home and participate in the general elections.
