The New Nation - Internet Edition

AP, Sukkur

Former Pakistan premier Nawaz Sharif, back from exile for next month's parliamentary elections, blasted President Pervez Musharraf as a failed leader largely under US control.

With just two weeks to go in what has been a bitter campaign, Sharif told around 3,000 supporters that he had ignored five phone calls from then US president Bill Clinton after Pakistan tested an atom bomb in 1998. "But Musharraf prostrates himself after just one phone from Washington," he said-an apparent reference to Musharraf's decision to join the US "war on terror" after the September 11 attacks on the United States.

"We have become a laughing stock all over the world," said Sharif, who was ousted as prime minister by Musharraf, his army chief at the time, in a 1999 coup. Pakistan had been one of only three countries to recognise the hardline militant Taliban as the legitimate government in neighbouring Afghanistan, which sheltered Al-Qaeda and its militant training camps.

After September 11, according to many reports, the United States telephoned Musharraf and told him he had to immediately decide whether to cooperate with the "war on terror" and stop backing the Taliban. He did so.

Musharraf has since become a pivotal US ally in the fight against Islamic militants, who are waging an increasingly violent insurgency in Pakistan.