• Let me ask you a question, and answer it honestly. Make a comparison between Gen Zia and Gen Musharraf.

Don’t ask me to do that. All that I know of Mr Musharraf is that he is a very erratic, very impulsive, and a very unpredictable man. He was appointed by me as Chief of Army Staff, and he stabbed me in the back. Without any rhyme or reason, he removed my government, staged a coup against my government. He was planning to do so. He was a very unreliable man.

• You think he had planned it, or it happened in the spur of the moment?

I think he was planning it after the Kargil episode. Actually, it was my government, on the Pakistani side, which averted a nuclear conflict between India and Pakistan. I think it is a tremendous service to humanity. I am also very grateful to then Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee, who also extended full cooperation. And he also felt let down. He also felt he was being stabbed by his Pakistani counterpart. I think he also has said , ‘I didn’t know that Mr Nawaz Sharif would stab me in the back.’ Not knowing that Nawaz Sharif himself was being stabbed in the back by his own Chief of Army Staff.

• So would you like to tell Mr Vajpayee now that you never stabbed him in the back?

No.

• And you say on your honour . . .

... contd.