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| Saturday, 6 December 2003 |
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Pakistan says banned radical groups to stay banned ISLAMABAD, Friday (Reuters) Outlawed radical Islamic groups will not be allowed to reappear under new names as has happened in Pakistan in the past, President Pervez Musharraf said. Addressing a meeting of about 80 religious scholars and clerics, he also vowed to control Islamic schools seen in the West as breeding grounds of Islamic extremism. "The government will not allow organisations to work under any other name and there is no question that they will be allowed to resurface under other names," said Information Secretary Anwar Mahmood, reporting on the two-hour meeting. Last month Musharraf outlawed a total of six Islamic militant groups, most of which had previously been banned but managed to resurface under new identities. They were linked to sectarian violence between Pakistan's majority Sunni and minority Shiite sects and a 14-year insurgency against Indian rule in Kashmir, the disputed Himalayan region at the heart of tension between the nuclear-armed neighbours. The bans came shortly after U.S. ambassador to Pakistan Nancy Powell voiced concern over the groups' re-emergence, although Musharraf said this was a coincidence. "Whatever the government is doing is not motivated by external pressures or threats," Mahmood quoted Musharraf as saying. The president is under fire, particularly from religious conservatives who oppose the pro-military government, for blindly backing the U.S.-led war on terror. Parties in the religious coalition supported Afghanistan's Taliban militia and opposed the U.S.-led war that toppled the militia in November, 2001. Musharraf also discussed planned reforms of madrassahs, or Islamic religious schools, which provide shelter and teaching to hundreds of thousands of young Pakistanis who would otherwise not be able to afford an education. "Some have been indulging in extremism and violence and they need to be checked and the government will check them," Mahmood quoted Musharraf as saying. |
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