Pak to submit details of Sharif's exile pact in SC

Islamabad, Aug 16: Pakistan's government will submit in the Supreme Court details of an agreement that facilitated former Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif's exile to Saudi Arabia seven years ago.

''The government plans to file details of the agreement by August 22,'' Attorney General Malik Muhammad Qayyum told reporters after the Court adjourned hearing into Sharif's petition challenging his exile, till August 23.

The submission of details about the agreement would enable the government to tell the Court the conditions under which Sharif settled in Saudi Arabia in December 2000.

Nawaz Sharif went in exile along with his family for ten years as a result of an understanding reached between Saudi royal family and Pakistan government, almost a year after he was overthrown in a bloodless military coup.

A five-member bench headed by the recently reinstated Chief Justice Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry heard the appeals filed by Sharif's brothers earlier this month challenging their exile and seeking a verdict that will allow them to return to Pakistan.

The government is currently discussing the issue with a third country which is very friendly to Pakistan, Mr Qayyum said, avoiding naming Saudi Arabia amid media reports that Riyadh had asked Islamabad not to unnecessarily drag it into the issue.

The Court refused the government's request for adjournment of the case for one month, saying it will hear lawyers from both the sides on August 23.

''It is Sharif's unequivocal right to return to the country being the citizen of Pakistan,'' his counsel Fakharuddin G Ibrahim told the Court.

UNI