- (AFP) -- Pakistan risks being bombed and sanctioned unless
it eradicates "senseless" religious extremism, President Pervez
Musharraf has warned.
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- Pakistan will suffer from sanctions and "they may
even start bombing our tribal areas", General Musharraf told local
newspaper editors late on Thursday, according to Fridayâs Dawn daily.
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- He did not specify who would drop bombs on Pakistan but
was understood to be referring to the United States. US troops are combing
the Afghanistan-Pakistan border in their two-year hunt for al-Qaida and
Taliban fighters and al-Qaida chief Usama bin Ladin.
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- "If we don't control the tribal areas and they start
bombing your tribal areas, what will we do? Let us not be under any illusion,"
the Nation newspaper quoted Musharraf saying.
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- Al-Qaida and Taliban fighters are believed to be using
bases in Pakistani tribal areas along the porous border to wage a guerrilla
campaign against aid workers and troops inside Afghanistan. Eighteen fighters
were captured and eight killed by Pakistani troops near the border on 2
October.
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- Crackdown
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- Musharraf issued the warning in the midst of an intensified
crackdown on alleged Islamic extremists, targeting already-outlawed groups
which had reemerged under new names.
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- Authorities are also swooping on suspected Taliban sympathisers
among illegal Afghan immigrants in the southwest border province of Baluchistan.
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- Since Saturday, Musharraf has banned six groups and placed
one under surveillance, accusing them of promoting extremism and religious
intolerance.
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- Police in Baluchistan have arrested 500 Afghan illegal
immigrants and begun deporting them.
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- Under suspicion
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- Musharraf said the world had started suspecting he and
the government were supporting ãextremists and terroristsä.
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- Bombs would be dropped and sanctions slapped on Pakistan
"if this perception is not removed urgently", Dawn quoted him
saying.
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- "This is one area which will drown us."
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- Scores of Islamist groups sprouted in Pakistan in the
wake of the 1979-1989 war to oust Soviet invaders from neighbouring Afghanistan
and since the start of a guerrilla insurgency in disputed Kashmir against
Indian forces in 1989.
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- http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/E9486179-BF3C-400C-90AC-C8264AFABE17.htm
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