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It's the season of truth-telling. South African cricketers are chorusing like canaries, and now deposed Pakistan prime minister Nawaz Shar...

It8217;s the season of truth-telling. South African cricketers are chorusing like canaries, and now deposed Pakistan prime minister Nawaz Sharif has decided to refocus attention on last summer8217;s still unresolved whodunit.

Almost a year after Pakistani intruders were knocked off their inhospitable perches on Kargil8217;s strategic heights, one question remains unanswered: who plotted the sinister operation? All key players have for the last twelve months indulged in an infuriating yes-no-maybe obfuscation; but now Sharif has for the first time declared that he was not aware of Operation Kargil in his words 8220;the biggest debacle after the 1971 war8221; till the fighting had already erupted. And while he says he will elucidate further only before a military commission, he has for good measure also washed his hands of the decision to journey to Washington, DC for the July 4 summit with US president Bill Clinton, only to be asked to beat a hasty retreat from the theatre of war. That visit, he claims, was undertaken onorders from army chief Pervez Musharraf.

Why has Sharif decided to invoke Kargil in his almost losing battle to regain his freedom? His words may bail out Indian defence minister George Fernandes, but Sharif is hardly in a position to hone his pronouncements on an altruistic impulse. Clearly, he was seeking to address that wider court of justice in today8217;s world, the US State Department. It is a game which has been played time and again in states perceived to be on the verge of becoming rogue: somehow try to convince the wise men and women of the lonely superpower that for all your visible shortcomings you are somehow better equipped to averting a flashpoint, in this case nuclear.

Musharraf, after all, has employed that logic with great success. Accordingly, Sharif may, a la Manoj Prabhakar, insist that names shall be revealed only at the appropriate hour, but his words are peppered with none-too-subtle clues. So, if a running theme during Clinton8217;s South Asian sojourn was resumption of the Lahore process, Sharif has made it a point to earnestly demand, why would he have invited Atal Behari Vajpayee to Lahore if he had been involved in preparations for the Kargil war?

Sadly for the former Pakistani prime minister, this PR offensive is not likely to bear dividends. Whether Sharif had any inkling of troop movements on the Indian side of the line of control or not, Musharraf8217;s central role in the entire drama is too well established for these statements to assume proportions of a bombshell. On the other hand, it could lead to renewed competition between Sharif and the military dictator to present their patriotic credentials to their people a prospect always viewed with apprehension, as jingoism on Kashmir is then just a couple of escalatory sentences away. Both adversaries should be made aware that harping on the logistics of the Kargil operation will not win them any brownie points; if they are indeed seeking global goodwill, it would be dependent on a demonstrated resolve to avoid a replay of Kargil.