LAHORE, Dec 15: Reacting to the lifting of emergency, PML-N leader Nawaz Sharif said “Gen” Musharraf had done so under foreign pressure.

“The general neither wanted to doff his uniform nor lift emergency, but yielded to foreign pressure,” the former prime minister told Dawn on Saturday.

About President Musharraf’s claim that he was lifting the emergency for the sake of democracy, Mr Sharif said if Pervez Musharraf really believed in democracy, he should reverse all unconstitutional and illegal steps he had taken on and after Nov 3. “He (Musharraf) in fact does not believe in democracy. He is a dictator who, unlike his predecessors, has gone several steps ahead to perpetuate his rule. He is a dictator who takes illegal steps and then gives them indemnity himself.”

Mr Sharif said the current crisis was due to Musharraf’s ‘lust for power’ which had driven him to trample parliament, judiciary and the media.