Former President Ghulam Ishaq Khan Passes Away
ISLAMABAD,28 October 2006 — Ghulam Ishaq Khan, Pakistan’s third civilian president,died in Peshawar yesterday following a bout of pneumonia. He was 91.
Khan’s son-in-law, Irfanullah Marwat, said the former Pakistan president, who won power following the 1988 death of military dictator Gen. Zia-ul-Haq in a mysterious plane crash, had been ill for the past three months.
Khan died in the northern city of Peshawar, where he spent most of his life, Marwat said. He was later buried in Peshawar.
“He was suffering from pneumonia, and it was the cause of his death,” Marwat told the Associated Press in Peshawar.
President Gen. Pervez Musharraf and Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz in separate messages sent to Khan’s family expressed grief and sorrow over his death.
“He (Khan) was an honest, upright person and dedicated to the services of Pakistan,” Musharraf said, according to the state-run news agency, the Associated Press of Pakistan.
Aziz said Khan’s contribution to Pakistan would be long remembered.
Khan, a career bureaucrat, was a close ally of Zia and held the post of chairman of Pakistan’s Senate when Zia was killed in a plane crash in eastern Pakistan along with then US Ambassador Arnold L. Raphel and several top Pakistani generals.
Ishaq Khan held key posts while being in civil service. Khan founded GIK (Ghulam Ishaq Khan ) Institute now considered one of the best IT institutes in Pakistan. “He was a noble man. One who adhered to rules and upheld the constitution,” said Gen. Aslam Beg, a former army chief.
Regarded as a strong-willed figure, Khan worked alongside former prime ministers Benazir Bhutto and Nawaz Sharif but dismissed the governments led by both in 1990 and 1993 respectively on charges of corruption and mismanagement.
“He (Khan) was a man of integrity,” said another son-in-law, Anwar Saifullah. “He was an honest person, and he never gave any undue favor to any one.” The row between Khan and Sharif continued following a subsequent Supreme Court decision that reinstated Sharif’s government.
Eventually, Pakistan’s powerful military intervened in the conflict and forced Khan to resign.
Khan, an ethnic-Pashtun born in northwestern Pakistan’s Bannu district, is survived by his wife, four daughters and one son.
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Posted - 28 Oct 2006 : 22:46:15
