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London, Feb 13: Pakistan lacked a central figure like Jawaharlal Nehru to guide the new state after the partition and Mohammad Ali Jinnah's early death only compounded matters, former prime minister Benazir Bhutto wrote in her last book.

"India had the advantage of having its father of independence -- Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru -- live long enough to establish a genuine working democracy," she wrote in Benazir Bhutto: Reconciliation, Islam, Democracy & the West, released both in London and Islamabad on Tuesday.

"Pakistan's founding father, Mohammad Ali Jinnah, tragically died in September 1948, in the first year of Pakistan's life, long before his work was done, indeed just as it was beginning," Bhutto, who was assassinated during an election rally at Rawalpindi on December 27, said.

According to Bhutto, the post-nuclear tests period in Pakistan when the then Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif froze private foreign accounts in response to the economic sanctions imposed by the international community led the economy into a tailspin. 

The economy at that time, according to her, was already under strain from Sharif's profligate ways.

Sharif, she said, went ahead with the tests, despite pleas of Washington and London, to "match India's feat of May 1988 (Pokhran)".

To Bhutto, the Kargil episode was the most humiliating moment for the Pakistani military since the fall of Dhaka.

Pakistan's decision to withdraw troops from Kargil on the advice of the US left Sharif "weakened and embarrassed", Bhutto felt.

Sharif had gotten himself into an intractable position and sought help from (US) President (Bill) Clinton to end the crisis.

"According to Bruce Reidel, a national security official, President Clinton was 'angry' with Nawaz Sharif, 'complaining that Pakistan had promised but failed to bring Osama bin Laden to justice from Afghanistan' and that Sharif had allowed ISI 'to work with the Taliban to foment terrorism'," she wrote.

Sharif was then asked by the US to withdraw troops from Kargil and "defuse the crisis".

"Sharif ordered a unilateral withdrawal of troops. As no plan was worked out with the Indians for a peaceful withdrawal, hundreds lost their lives as they withdrew.

"The Indians shot them down as they regained the peaks. Others died of frost and cold. It was the most humiliating moment for the military since the fall of Dacca."

Bhutto said the central message she would like to convey through her book is "of the two critical tensions that must be reconciled to prevent the clash of civilisations that some believe looms before us".

"There is an internal tension within Muslim society too. The failure to resolve that tension peacefully and rationally threatens to degenerate into a collision course of values spilling into a clash between Islam and the West," the book said.

Describing Pakistan as the most dangerous place in the world, the slain Pakistan People's Party leader said the "country faces the threat of Talibanisation and Balkanisation, which are gaining in strength".