PAKISTAN: DEPOSED PM NAWAZ SHARIF

(10 Dec 2000) Urdu/Eng/Nat
XFA
Pakistan's deposed Prime Minister, Nawaz Sharif, was reported to be on a plane heading for Saudi Arabia early on Sunday.

It had emerged that the country's military government pardoned and then exiled him.

It is more than a year since it toppled his administration in a coup.

"This decision has been taken in the best interest of the country and people of Pakistan," the government said in an official statement carried by the state-run news agency.

There was no further explanation for why army ruler Gen. Pervez Musharraf, who overthrew Sharif's elected government, would let him leave the country.

There was no sign that he would ever be allowed to return.

His wife, Kulsoom said they were being forced to leave.

"Pakistan will never be far from our hearts," she said. "We pray that our countrymen will be prosperous and whenever Nawaz Sharif's health is better we will come back."

Kulsoom said her husband needed immediate medical treatment and suffers from high blood pressure and a heart ailment.

"His face becomes pale and he grabs his chest while walking even up to the toilet," she said.

The government said Sharif's life sentence for hijacking and kidnapping had been commuted - convictions connected with the October 1999 coup - as had a 14-year jail term for abuse of power.

Sharif still must forfeit property valued at $100 million and pay a $500,000 fine.

Eighteen family members will be going to Saudi Arabia with Sharif.

They included Sharif's elderly parents, his three children and their families, as well as
his brother Shahbaz, a former chief minister of Pakistan's powerful Punjab province, his wife and daughter.

Also allowed to leave is Sharif's younger brother Abbas and his two sons.

Abbas, who had been in jail on corruption charges, was released, said Mariam Sharif, the deposed prime minister's daughter.

Pakistan Muslim League officials said a member of the Saudi royal family brokered
Sharif's release from prison and exile to Saudi Arabia.

Officials in Saudi Arabia were not available for comment.

As custodians of Islam's holiest shrines, the Saudis have a tradition of opening their doors for fellow Muslims seeking refuge.

Idi Amin, the exiled and brutal former dictator of Uganda, was received by the Saudis in 1980, a year after he was ousted from his East African homeland.

Sharif appointed Javed Hashmi as new acting president of his party.

Hashmi told reporters that he would take his orders from the exiled Sharif.

In Sharif's hometown of Lahore in eastern Punjab province, his elderly parents packed their belongings, Mariam Sharif said.

Earlier, Pakistani Information Secretary Anwar Mahmood told The Associated Press that Sharif - who has been held in a cell in a 16th-century fort - had asked permission to leave the country for medical treatment.

General Musharraf overthrew Sharif's government in a bloodless coup last year, accusing him of corruption and misrule after Sharif dismissed Musharraf and tried to replace him with a junior general.

After the coup, the military government charged Sharif with ordering the hijacking of a plane carrying Musharraf.

Sharif argued that his actions only aimed to avert a coup that was already under way.

Frustrated by years of corruption and misrule by elected governments, most Pakistanis welcomed the coup.

Corruption is a major issue in Pakistan, where four successive governments have been thrown out due to corruption since 1990.

SOUNDBITE: (Urdu)
SUPER CAPTION: Kulsoom Nawaz, wife of deposed Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif
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