Pervez Musharraf denied visa to tour India

NEW DELHI: Former Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf has been denied a visa to tour India, primarily to attend a seminar this weekend, in view of reservations expressed by the home ministry.

Mr Musharraf, currently living in self-exile in the UK, had applied for a visa with the Indian mission in London. However, when the application was forwarded to the MHA for clearance, it expressed reservations over allowing the chief architect of Kargil War to speak at a public forum here.

The observations made by the former Pakistani president, who was army chief during the Kargil War, in his 2006 memoir In the Line of Fire that “Kargil operations were a landmark in the history of the Pakistani army,” played on MHA’s mind as it decided against allowing Mr Musharraf’s visit. Also, his recent comments blaming India for creating unrest in Pakistan’s south-western Baluchistan province had not gone down well with the Indian government.

There was apprehension in the MHA that Mr Musharraf — who proposed to travel to Delhi, Chennai, Bangalore and Kolkata during his India visit — might try to “glorify” Kargil war and link India to the unrest in Balochistan during his lectures at the seminar being organised by Young Presidents Organisation, an international outfit involving influential business leaders.

That Mr Musharraf and his close associates were responsible for the Kargil conflict between India and Pakistan was recently confirmed by the then chief of Pakistani army’s Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), Retd Gen Ziauddin Butt.

“The then Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif was not given a proper briefing on the Kargil operation. Musharraf bluffed him (Nawaz) to start the Kargil war,” Butt had said in a media interview in November.

Pakistan and India fought the Kargil battle between May and July, 1999. During the conflict and thereafter, Pakistan had flatly denied any involvement of its Army and projected the battle as one fought by “groups of mujahids seeking to liberate Kashmir.” However, in his book published in 2006, Mr Musharraf went on to claim the military operations in Kargil as a success.

“Considered purely in military terms, the Kargil operations were a landmark in the history of the Pakistani army,” Musharraf wrote in his memoir.