Islamabad: Exiled former Pakistan Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif has said that more than 4,000 Pakistani troops and officials were killed during the 1999 Kargil conflict, which also sabotaged the Indo-Pak normalisation process initiated by him and Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee.

Accusing President Pervez Musharraf of masterminding the Kargil conflict, during which militants backed by Pakistani troops occupied the mountain peaks of Kargil in Jammu and Kashmir, Sharif said the entire operation was launched without the knowledge of his government.

Sharif also admitted that Pakistan was defeated in Kargil, but said he covered it up by undertaking a visit to the US, after which Islamabad announced a withdrawal.

Had he accepted defeat then, it would have demoralised the Army and India would have got an "opportunity" to invade Pakistan, Sharif said in a message read out at a joint Opposition rally organised by the 15-party Alliance for Restoration of Democracy (ARD) at Lahore.

Sharif, who is in exile in Saudi Arabia, said more than 4,000 Pakistani troops and officials were killed in the Kargil operation. This was the first time that Sharif disclosed the number of Pakistani casualties, which were kept a closely-guarded secret.

Musharraf was the Chief of Army during Sharif's tenure as Prime Minister. Sharif was later overthrown in a military coup and sent to exile to Jeddah in Saudi Arabia in 2000.

He said the Kargil "plan" had been prepared by Musharraf without intimating his government. As a result, the Lahore process initiated by him and Vajpayee to normalise relations between Pakistan and India was sabotaged.

"Had Kargil not taken place, the Kashmir issue would have been resolved long ago," Sharif was quoted as saying in his message by local media on August 16.

He said instead of accepting responsibility and resigning voluntarily, Musharraf overthrew his government under "dictation from some other quarters". However, he did not identify which "quarters" he meant.

Sharif also alleged that Musharraf was also behind the protests staged by some religious parties during Vajpayee's visit to Lahore by bus in 1999.

Vajpayee was not given the honour equal even to that accorded to the delegation of Parliamentarians and journalists which visited Pakistan a few days ago, Sharif said.

He said the political crisis faced by country was the result of subversion of the 1973 Constitution by Musharraf.

"Enemy to the 1973 Constitution is more dangerous than the external enemy," he said.

PTI