Pakistan's Sharif Says He's No Extremist

Former Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, left, speaks as his brother Shahbaz Sharif looks on at a press conference at his home in Lahore, Pakistan Monday Nov. 26, 2007. Pakistan's election commission on Saturday Dec. 1, 2007, rejected the candidacy of Shahbaz Sharif for the upcoming election, saying Shahbaz had defaulted on a bank loan and was allegedly involved in a murder case in 1998 while chief minister of Punjab province. (AP Photo/Greg Baker) (Greg Baker - AP)

Bruce Reidel, a National Security Council specialist on Mideast and South Asia affairs under both Bush and President Clinton, said the U.S. is wrong to brand Sharif as the enemy.

"There has been a mischaracterization of Nawaz Sharif. If his is an Islamist party, it is an Islamist party along the scale of the Islamist party of Turkey," he said in a telephone interview with AP. "They are very moderate, mainstream Muslims. We had a perfectly good relationship with Nawaz Sharif when he was prime minister."

The 1990s were turbulent years for Pakistan, during which both Sharif and Bhutto served two terms as prime minister. In that decade, the Taliban was born and found a sponsor in Pakistan. Terrorist training camps flourished before the Taliban and during their repressive regime, aided by Pakistan's military and intelligence service.

Reidel, who is now a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution's Saban Center for Middle East Policy, said the key to defeating militant Islam in Pakistan is not to be found in a debate of Bhutto vs. Sharif.

He said it lies in settling the decades-old dispute between India and Pakistan over Kashmir, a mostly Muslim former princely state in the Himalayas that was divided between the two countries at independence from Britain. Both nations claim a united Kashmir as their own.

Until that happens, Reidel said, the Pakistani military and Inter-Services Intelligence agency will continue to help Islamic militants they see as freedom fighters _ despite also working with the United States to hunt down others in the war on terrorism.

"For the military and the ISI, there are good terrorists and bad terrorists, but for us they are all bad terrorists," Reidel said.

Reidel portrayed both Sharif and Bhutto as subservient to a powerful military and the intelligence agency. He said the two are politicians and both would align themselves with anyone to get power or stay in power.

Reidel said Sharif was ready to rein in the Taliban toward the end of his rule but couldn't force the change on his security forces.

"I think the fair thing to say is that he never was able to get control over the army and the ISI, and never able to break the relationship between the ISI and its various clients: whether the Kashmiris, or the Taliban, and indirectly through the Taliban with al-Qaida," said Reidel.

Sharif may also have been the first Pakistani leader to offer the United States use of Pakistani territory to hunt down Osama bin Laden. Reidel said Sharif made that offer in 1999, but the Clinton administration didn't think he had enough clout with his own military to get them to deliver.

Sharif told AP that he also offered to rein in the Taliban but Musharraf, then commander of Pakistan's military, rejected the idea of cracking down on the militants, whom Pakistan saw as key regional allies.

"Musharraf told me at the time, 'Oh, prime minister, you know these people are our first line of defense.' I was amazed and I was stunned," Sharif said in the Friday interview.

Reidel was there July 4, 1999, when Sharif met with Clinton at the White House and immediately afterward ordered Pakistani soldiers out of India's Kargil territory averting an escalation of a bloody battle that had the world worrying about a nuclear confrontation.

It was Musharraf who staged the Kargil operation. Soon after, the general ousted Sharif and made himself president while also retaining his post as military chief _ a role he reluctantly relinquished Wednesday.

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Associated Press Writers Carley Petesch and Lily Hindy contributed to this story from New York.

(This version CORRECTS that Sharif said Musharraf rejected idea of cracking on the Taliban, instead of that Musharraf rejected idea of hunting bin Laden.)