Quit politics, Shahbaz tells Nawaz Sharif

Quit politics, Shahbaz tells Nawaz Sharif
PRESS TRUST OF INDIA

ISLAMABAD, JULY 21: Differences have cropped up in deposed Pakistan premier Nawaz Sharif's family with his younger brother Shahbaz Sharif reportedly asking him to quit politics and disapproving the current policy of confrontation with the military regime.

In his four-page letter, as reported in local Urdu press on Friday, Shahbaz, former chief minister of Punjab province, asked his brother, who is in jail, to apologise to the military regime for the "past mistakes".

In the letter, he told Nawaz Sharif that he had no role in any coming political set-up and asked him to nominate one of his trusted men as acting president of his Pakistan Muslim League (N).

Party sources confirmed the letter which they said had also been signed by former Sindh chief minister Syed Ghous Ali Shah and ex-PIA chairman Shahid Khaqan Abbasi, who turned approver and was acquitted by the court in the plane hijacking case against the deposed premier.

The letter did not go well with Kulsoom Nawaz, wife of Sharif, who has followed the South Asian tradition of females taking mantle from their brothers, fathers and husbands and joining politics. "Ask your friend (the chief executive) to shun tussle," Kulsoom retorted to Shahbaz's letter at her hometown Lahore.

She said Shahbaz should have addressed the letter to military ruler General Pervez Musharraf as he was the one who was transgressing all limits by implicating the Sharifs in baseless cases every day.