"I broke down and cried. All my brave soldiers cried with me. It remains most sad and most painful day of my life," he wrote in his book 'In the Line of Fire'.

"It was nexus between Bhutto and small coterie of rulers that destroyed Pakistan. The myopic rigid attitude of (Bangladeshi leader) Sheikh Mujibur Rahman did not help matters .............," he said.

Musharraf said he, along with a company of Special Security Group (SSG) commandoes, were tasked to go East Pakistan before it fell.

"My troops were brimming with confidence and we were all set to go when the ceasefire was announced and East Pakistan was forcibly torn away from us to form the separate state of Bangladesh. It was terrible day.

"When I was telling my troops about the ceasefire, the surrender of our 90,000 personnel, (military and civilian) came about," the Pakistani leader said.

"What happened in East Pakistan is the saddest episode in Pakistan's history," Musharraf said, adding that it was due to 'inept handling' since independence.

"Blame ultimately fell on the army. As events developed, the army was confronted with an impossible situation -- mass popular uprising within and an invasion from without by India supposedly non-aligned but now being overtly helped by Soviet Union under a treaty of peace and friendship. It was actually an alliance of war," he said.

Blaming the US of failing to help Pakistan, he said, ".................. our long time ally, USA, apart from making sympathetic noises and wringing its hands was nowhere to be seen."

"No army in the world can sustain such a multi-dimensional threat. Nonetheless, the operational handling of the troops by the army's senior leadership was simply incompetent."