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Pakistani extremists fail to drum up support

Calls by Muslim militants for a 'black day' of protest against Pakistan's accord with the United States to pull out of the Indian side of the Line of Control in Kashmir drew scant backing today.

Small crowds turned out in major Pakistani cities to back calls by the militants and the main Islamic fundamentalist political party to protest against what they called a sell-out and surrender.

The protest was against Prime Minister Nawaz Sharief's Sunday agreement with President Bill Clinton to defuse the military standoff with India by calling for the withdrawal of the so-called mujahideen.

The reason for the low turnout on a key issue on Pakistan's foreign policy agenda was not clear.

In Muzaffarabad, capital of Pakistan-occupied Kashmir, a crowd of about 300 people burnt effigies of Sharief and Clinton.

"Kashmir is the lifeline of Pakistan and the mujahideen are fighting for the cause of Pakistan," Munawar Hasan, acting chief of the fundamentalist Jamaat-e-Islami party, told a rally of about 2,000 in Karachi.

"Nawaz Sharief is the traitor of all traitors and should be treated as such when he returns to Pakistan," he said. "The movement against Nawaz Sharief will continue till his ouster."

The Jamaat is the main Islamic opposition party, but it boycotted the last election and has no parliamentary seats.

Hasan said Sharief's agreement supports "the Indian position on Kashmir. The nation rejects the [US-Pakistan] declaration totally."

Protests were also muted in Lahore, only 32 km from the Indian border. At one city centre rally, only one person turned up, residents said.

A crowd of about 1,000 staged a brief rally in Islamabad, the federal capital, but the protest failed to match similar pro-Kashmiri demonstrations organised by government parties in the past.

Puzzled Pakistani newspapers called on the government to explain what Sharief had agreed to do in Kashmir in his weekend dash to Washington for talks with Clinton.

"The joint statement of Prime Minister Nawaz Sharief and President Clinton, as released by the White House, is likely to leave many in Pakistan bewildered," The Nation said.

"While our government spokesmen will, as usual, try to put all kinds of spin on this statement, the people have a right to know what the country has gained and what it has lost," said the English-language daily, The News.

"Mr Sharief, after all, himself sought a meeting whose outcome, as is evident from the joint statement, is the very opposite of his own stated objective and recent rhetoric," the paper said in an editorial.

UNI

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