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FAISALABAD, Pakistan, April 15 (AFP) - Pakistan's military government has launched an inquiry into a police assault on journalists covering a rally by President Pervez Musharraf, officials said Monday.

More than 20 journalists were injured here late Sunday when police clubbed them with batons after they boycotted Musharraf's speech in response to an irate public attack on the press by Punjab governor Khalid Maqbool, reporters said.

The trouble erupted when Maqbool, a retired army general, invited the public to join him in chanting "shame, shame" against journalists for their allegedly negative reporting of Musharraf's rallies.

General Musharraf has been making speeches around the country to gain support ahead of an April 30 referendum to decide whether he should remain as president for five years.

Speaking shortly before Musharraf was to address a huge crowd in this Punjab city, Maqbool accused journalists of publishing "fake reports" on the numbers of people attending the president's rallies.

Whipping the crowd into anger, he also warned that reporters should know "the public could take revenge on them if they did not desist from wrong reporting," journalists said.

The reporters responded by walking out of the press enclosure shouting slogans against the governor.

As they headed towards the Faisalabad press club, a contingent of police charged them with batons. At least three journalists received head injuries but their condition was not serious, according to local newspapers.

The journalists later held a meeting to condemn the governor's "indecent remarks" and the police assault.

"An official probe into the incident has already started," a senior police official told AFP.

Information Minister Nisar Memon said Musharraf had taken "serious note of the unfortunate incident" and ordered an immediate and full investigation.

He said in a statement the president had asked the Punjab government to complete the inquiry expeditiously and take prompt action against all those officers who "transgressed" the law.

"All those found guilty will be punished," Memon said.

Musharraf seized power in a bloodless military coup in October 1999 and has promised to return Pakistan to "genuine democracy" with general elections in October.

He has generally tolerated a free press, but the state-run media is used to advance his agendas and political parties are banned from holding public rallies.

International press watchdog Reporters Sans Frontieres (Reporters Without Borders) said it had written to the Pakistani government condemning the incident.

"At the start of the referendum campaign the use of such methods with regard to the press does not augur well for the climate in which this election, a crucial one for Pakistan, is to take place," RSF General Secretary Robert Menard said in a statement recieved here.

Pakistan's independent Human Rights Commission also issued a statement branding the incident an "indication of increasingly dangerous interference with the media's role".

"Even more ominous is that remarks by the Punjab governor ... appeared to have instigated the police action," it said.

"Indeed it would appear that the administration is growing increasingly aggressive in its attempts to muzzle the press."

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