Bill Clinton offered $5 billion to stop Pak nuke tests, claims Nawaz Sharif

ISLAMABAD: Former Pakistan Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif has claimed he was offered USD five billion by the then US President Bill Clinton for not conducting nuclear tests in 1998.

"President Clinton telephoned me five times and offered USD five billion for not testing the nuclear weapons. I refused the offer for the integrity and security of Pakistan," he said in an interview with ARY television.

The exiled Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) chief also claimed that President Pervez Musharraf had "fabricated the plane-hijacking story to hide his own mistakes".

Sharif said he did not block the runway to prevent Musharraf's plane from landing in October 1999, just before the military coup.

He said he had refused to sign the documents of his resignation and "suspension" of Parliament. 

"I was also asked to sign a document expressing my failure as prime minister and making an apology to the nation and Gen Musharraf," Sharif said.

"I will not like to become the second Shaukat Aziz," he said referring to the incumbent Prime Minister, adding that those who left him would not be accepted in the party.

"It would be like selling my conscience," Daily Times quoted him as saying.

Sharif, however, said the Pakistani government might have struck a deal with the Saudi Arabian government for his exile.

He said he was kept in a small cell for 14 months and was treated like a "war prisoner".

"I was in the Attock prison when a Saudi man came and told me that a deal had been reached between the Suadi and the Pakistani governments for my exile," he said.