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'If Sharif had not visited US, we would have conquered 300 square miles of India'

Describing former Pakistan chief of army staff Lt Gen (retired) Shahid Aziz as an imbalanced personality who indulged in uncalled for character assassination, former president and army chief General (retired) Pervez Musharraf justified the 1999 Kargil War and stated that there was absolutely no need to inform everyone about the operation.

Rejecting the suggestion that he had wilfully put a "tight lid" on details regarding the Kargil war operation when he was Pakistan's chief of army staff, Musharraf told the Express News show Kal Tak that former prime minister Nwaz Sharif was solely to blame for the defeat, though militarily it was a success in the sense that it completely exposed the Indian security establishment's unpreparedness.

"If he (Sharif) had not visited the United States, we would have conquered 300 square miles of India," claimed Musharraf.

He described the Kargil operation as a localised one, where the exchange of fire was routine.

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'Nawaz lost a political front which we had won militarily'

"Nawaz lost a political front which we had won militarily," he added.

During the Kargil conflict of 1999, Aziz ran the Inter-Services Intelligence analysis wing.

"The prime consideration of such actions is security and secrecy, so the army leadership decides who is to be informed and when. As the operation progressed and the proper time arrived, a briefing of the corps commanders was also held," Musharraf said.

The former president said he was astonished by Lt Gen (retired) Aziz's claim 10 years later.

Blaming the nation at this juncture of time, as Lt Gen (retd) Shahid has done, seems to be part of a conspiracy, he added.