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| Musharraf reveals coup details in memoirs | | |
Islamabad Sep 26 The one hour on October 12, 1999, between 1845 hrs 1945 hrs in the evening, Pakistan’s history changed dramatically, President Pervez Musharraf writes in ‘In The Line of Fire’.
Pakistan's news agency, SANA, quoted from some exclusive excerpts
from an advance manuscript of the book in which Musharraf talks about the dramatic circumstances that elevated him as the country's head.
''It was October 12, 1999.The time was 6:45pm. The flight was PK
805. The plane was an Airbus. There were 198 passengers on board,
many of them school children. We were due to land in 10 minutes,'' he
writes. But then PM Nawaz Sharif had given explicit orders that the
flight should not be allowed to land anywhere in Pakistan.
‘I told a crew member to ask Air Traffic Control again why they
were not permitting us to land considering our precarious fuel
situation. The reply, ‘Climb to 21,000 feet and just get out of
Pakistan and go anywhere.’
''Air Traffic Control suggested we head to Bombay, Oman, Abu
Dhabi, or Bandar Abbas in Iran, just about anywhere except (for some
reason) Dubai. They also informed our pilot that they had directed
all airports not to let our plane land anywhere in Pakistan. No one
below the Prime minister could give such a drastic order. Sacking
an Army Chief is one thing, but hijacking his plane and sending
it to India is diabolical.''
As the news of a political coup dawned on him, Gen Musharraf said
his army rallied behind him. They were launching a counter coup.
'' Maj Gen Malik Iftikhar Ali Khan, the commander of an Army
division in Karachi, made radio contact with the aircraft. ‘Tell
the chief to come back and land in Karachi,’ he told the pilot.
‘Everything is alright now.’''
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