`We will not leave Pakistan...' ..we'll stay back and fight to the finish,' Nawaz Sharif's UK-based son Hasan tells Rashmee Z Ahmed LONDON: As the podgy young man stepped on to the stage to receive his degree at the university convocation, his father was led into a courtroom half a world away to face trial for conspiracy to murder and hijacking. Hasan Sharif, the pimply new alumnus of City University here, describes his convocation day as especially charged with emotion because in a strange coincidence, his father, the former prime minister of Pakistan, was back on TV screens around the world after five weeks of army detention. Says Hasan: ``I saw my father after a long time, and I felt so depressed and frustrated that I could not talk to him, and that too on my convocation day.'' The young man admits he is worried about the trial. ``I have written to everyone -- to President Bill Clinton, United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees Mary Robinson and Amnesty, for example -- to ask for international observers at my father's trial,'' he says. ``General (Pervez) Musharraf has said my father was corrupt, yet he has not been able to frame any corruption charges against him so far.'' Asked if he is at least reassured that Nawaz Sharif is to be tried in the anti-terrorism courts, the very courts he set up two years ago, Hasan says, ``The courts are good, but my father is not a terrorist. He should be tried by an independent civil court of Pakistan.'' As the only member of the Sharif family to be abroad and, hence, at liberty after the army coup, Hasan says he has travelled continents to spread the word. But what word exactly? Are not the people of Pakistan strangely happy that Sharif has been removed from office? ``It might seem so, but if my father was dishonest or unpopular, it should surely have been left to the people to deal with him, not General Musharraf.'' Hasan adds that the Americans seem to appreciate this position. ``I have just returned from a meeting in the United States with secretary of state for energy Bill Richardson and assistant secretary of state for South Asia affairs Karl Inderfurth. I know the Americans have to be diplomatic and I know they don't want to shut the door on Musharraf, but I'm not disappointed with what they said.'' So does he fear the worst now that the trial of his father is beginning? Do contemporary events in Pakistan remind him of the troubled history of 20 years ago? ``Things are very different now. The world is very interested. Pakistan is important strategically, it is a nuclear power. Zia-ul-Haq was dealing with just one person, Zulfikar Ali Bhutto. Musharraf has to deal with a whole family. We have a business empire that goes back 50 years. We will not leave Pakistan. We will stay and fight.''
For reprint rights: Times Syndication Service
|Disclaimer|
For comments and feedback send Email Bennett, Coleman & Co. Ltd. 1999.