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A militant, detained earlier this month for planning an attack on U.S.diplomats in Karachi, was formally arrested by police yesterday in connection with the May 8 car bombing outside a hotel which killed 11 French technicians.

After losing the battle for prime minister at the centre, Makhdoom Amin Fahim, the Pakistan People's Party Parliamentarians chairman, is trying to get his son nominated for the slot of chief minister of Sindh despite fierce resistance from a powerful party lobby.

The Muttahida Qaumi Movement, which last week abandoned the fragile coalition government, erasing its slim majority, announced yesterday it had patched up with Prime Minister Mir Zafarullah Khan Jamali, saying that the party would stand by him in the wider interest of democracy.

Unidentified terrorists killed three people inside Macedonia's Consulate in the restive port city of Karachi overnight and then blew up its building with powerful explosives, burying bodies in the rubble, police officials said yesterday.

Asif Ali Zardari, husband of former prime minister Benazir Bhutto, who was released earlier this week on parole for 15 days to attend the religious rites of his deceased mother, has been moved to Karachi from his hometown of Nawabshah, a PPP spokesman said yesterday.

After a delay of more than two months, the Sindh provincial assembly members were finally sworn in yesterday as pro-military political parties prepared to form a coalition, keeping former premier Benazir Bhutto's party out of power in her home province.

Pro-military political parties yesterday defeated the joint candidate of former premier Benazir Bhutto's party and the hardline Islamic alliance for the slots of speaker and deputy speaker in the Sindh Assembly, setting the stage for government formation in this volatile province more than two months after the election.

Two family members of a leading terror suspect, also wanted in the kidnap slaying of U.S. reporter Daniel Pearl, yesterday identified his body among the four badly-mutilated corpses, found from the rubble of a three-storey building which collapsed two days ago after a massive explosion.

Four militants, who planned to blow up a major bridge in the commercial hub of Karachi, were arrested by the police as they were about to strike at their target, police said yesterday.

MQM set to make new start

The nominee of the Muttahida Qaumi Movement (MQM) will take the oath of office as Governor of Sindh province today, even as a hardline Sindhi nationalist group slammed President Gen. Pervez Musha-rraf's choice.

New governor takes charge