New Delhi, June 25: Terming Pakistan's Kargil incursion as an "absolute disaster", former Pakistan premier Benazir Bhutto tonight said Pervez Musharraf as a senior army officer had brought the plan to her when she was in power claiming he would put Pakistan's flag on Jammu and Kashmir. "I asked (Gen) Musharraf what would happen when the Kargil plan was put up to me and he said he would put the flag of Pakistan on the Srinagar assembly," recalled Bhutto in an interview. She said she had vetoed the plan because she knew that "ultimately we would have been asked to go back to where we were and that's exactly what happened". Asked how she would have responded to Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee's peace initiative if she had been in power, Bhutto said she would have "taken to task home-grown militants" who, under Musharraf's regime, were dictating the country's foreign policy agenda. "We (Pakistan people's party) would have taken to task the home-grown militants and simply not allowed them to dictate Pakistan's foreign policy agenda by doing what they want and when they want," she said.

Observing that the attack on Indian Parliament and some other major terrorist strikes took place during Musharraf's rule, Bhutto said her party was deeply concerned that al-Qaeda people were turning up in Pakistan.

"We would have made the situation very difficult for them to either seek refuge in Pakistan or for the Taliban to regroup in Pakistan or for our own home-grown militants to use Pakistan as a base for launching attacks on other countries," she said.

Bureau Report