Lahore, May 10 (ANI): Pakistan Muslim League chief Nawaz Sharif, who is described by friends and supporters as "power-obsessed, arrogant, impulsive, unwilling to collaborate", is said to have mellowed down ahead of the polls.
Sharif, who twice held Pakistan's premiership in the 1990s, defied Washington, tested a nuclear bomb and is touted as likely to win a third term in Saturday's national election, is said to have turned a new leaf, reports The Washington Post.
According to analysts, 63-year-old Sharif is now a mature statesman who is the best choice to lead his crisis-prone country. Some analysts say Sharif emerged chastened and mellower after his fall from power in a 1999 military coup, a humiliating stint in prison and several years in exile.
If his party, the PML-N, wins the most seats in Parliament and he again becomes premier, they say, he is likely to maintain cordial relations with Washington and tread gingerly with Pakistan's powerful military, while first bearing down on his country's serious economic woes.
Sharif, a religious conservative whom critics describe as soft on militant groups, also has promised to recalibrate Pakistan's counterterrorism partnership with the United States, which many Pakistanis want to see severed.
Sharif has said that he is open to negotiations with the Pakistani Taliban, a virulently anti-state group that is allied with the Afghan Taliban and al-Qaeda, seeks to impose Islamic law in Pakistan and has staged attacks that have killed thousands of Pakistani troops and citizens. (ANI)
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