LONDON, July 21 The 'Welcome and launch' event which the so-called 'Lovers of Musharraf' group was planning to organise on a grand scale turned out to be a tame affair here on Monday with the redoubtable Lord Nazir Ahmad almost succeeding in making it a non-starter first by organising a little protest picket outside the venue and then inside by objecting to the very format of the event.

When the event finally started about half an hour late in a small little committee room in the House of Commons with a capacity of no more than 100, the audience nearly 90 per cent of whom had come on the special invitation of the organisers were treated to a little over 90 minute of Musharraf's often repeated half-baked theories about terrorism, Taliban and Al Qaeda and even more half-baked short- and long-term strategies which he said could route the menace completely.

In his opening remarks which lasted for more than 30 minutes, he insisted that if the world had listened to him terrorism would have disappeared from the face of the earth long ago.

The author of the 'In the Line of Fire' sounded as if he was still trapped in the web of self-delusion which he had woven around himself when in power.

During the Q&A session, he refused to accept that it was during his rule that terrorism found the political space to expand and become a real threat to the state.

“In fact by February 18 when the elections were held in Pakistan I had routed the Taliban completely forcing them to disperse in the mountains. That is why the ANP could sweep the polls in the NWFP. But the ANP turned this victory into defeat by releasing Sufi Mohammad and using him to negotiate with Fazlullah. This led to the killing spree in Malakand, Swat and Bajaur etc.,” he claimed with a straight face.

The only time during the long-drawn interaction that he said he had committed a mistake was when on the advice of one of his cabinet ministers he allowed the release of Ghazi of Red Mosque who was arrested with a rocket launcher in his car.

He refused to answer a question on Bugti's death on grounds that he was not 'here' to discuss what he did when he was in power in Pakistan.

When told that he was instrumental in the assassination of Benazir Bhutto because he had not provided her with adequate security, he countered with “That is a figment of your imagination.”

When asked if he would appear before the UN commission probing Benazir's death if summoned or do it voluntarily, he sidestepped the question and discussed in detail the merits and demerits of seeking UN help in investigating a domestic crime.

When asked about the legality of the NRO, he justified it by saying that the cases which had started long before his advent had taken too long to complete and, therefore, he had quashed them with a stroke of a pen.

“Even the Swiss courts were taking too long. You cannot accuse them of being prone to bribery or coercion like it happens in our country,” he added.

When told that the Supreme Court has acquitted Nawaz Sharif in the hijacking case, he said he would not say anything more than what he had said verbatim in his book about the incident. He sounded as if his account more than nullified the Supreme Court's ruling.

When asked for his reaction to the restoration of Chief Justice Iftikhar Mohammad Chaudhry, he said he would not like to say anything more than that Chaudhry was now the Chief Justice and then implied with tongue in cheek that the restoration was contrived.

It was perhaps only incidental that the chair continued to ignore my raised hand during the Q&A session.

The event was organised by MP Khalid Mahmood who was recently fingered in expenses scandal reports for having charged the taxpayers for his short trips to a love-nest with a female companion and Mr Anjum Chaudhry of Music Hut, an eating place; both leading members of the LoM.

Khalid Mahmood who also heads the joint parliamentary committee on anti-terrorism tried to pass the event off as an official programme of the House of Commons but the Lord Nazir Ahmad pricked the balloon when at the very outset he said that it was more of a political gathering than a committee hearing by pointing out to a fairly large crowd of ethnic Pakistanis in the audience.

“It is more of a Pakistani style rent-a-crowd, “he told me later.

The audience included, besides the invited guests, a handful of journalists from ethnic media, one from The Guardian and about six or seven MPS.

During the Q&A session every time he made a banal point there was a smattering of clapping from the well-heeled special invitees who sat seemingly lapping up every word Musharraf spoke, but the confused expression on their faces betrayed that they were having a hard time reconciling with so many of his contradictory claims.

When asked about the state of war on terror he said “We are not winning, but we are not losing either.”

When he felt it advanced his arguments he justified the ISI's links with the Taliban and at other times he vehemently denied that the ISI or the army or he himself had ever indulged in double-dealing.

He admitted that Pakistan trained the mujahideen who went into Kashmir, “but it was not done at the state level but perhaps some retired army officers were involved in this clandestine activity”.

As usual he praised the army and the ISI and said if it had not been for these two organisations Pakistan would have been a worse mess.

Answering another question, he said he disagreed with the British prime minister that 75 per cent of suspected terror cases in the UK had their origins in Pakistan.