Eight years of the Musharraf era has seen a sea change in Indo-Pak bilateral relationship but he did not start this process on a clean slate and was at odds with India.

Musharraf's action as Army chief in secretly ordering Pakistani commandos to occupy the Kargil heights was criticised as a misadventure. It also brought back images of

the General swaggering among his troops smoking a cigarette and firing a pistol in the air flashed on Television screens during a visit to forward positions in Pakistan.

The ill-fated attempt to seize ground from India in Kashmir orchestrated by Musharraf, who had fought two wars against India, also triggered a clash with the then premier Nawaz Sharif who maintained that he was kept in the dark.

Pakistan pulled back troops following immense pressure from the US. Musharraf's Kargil mission came months before he ousted Nawaz Sharif in a bloodless coup. Over 500 Indian soldiers were killed and around 1,500 injured during the Kargil conflict that took place between May 8 and July 14.

A terror attack on the Indian Parliament in December 2001, six months after the failed Agra summit, prompted a huge military build-up on both sides of the Indo-Pak border bringing the two countries to an eyeball-to-eyeball confrontation.

Musharraf declared himself as President days before he came for his maiden visit to India for the Agra summit with Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee in July 2001.

The summit failed after the General refused to accept any reference to the ending of cross-border terrorism in Kashmir and cancelled the rest of his trip to India.