Call to enforce arms display ban strictly

The federal government has directed all provinces to strictly enforce the policy of no arms display and prohibit all groups, be it Jihadi or not, from forcing people to give donations, a senior official said yesterday.

These directives, said the source, were communicated to the provincial governments in light of the orders of Chief Executive General Pervez Musharraf.

The interior ministry, said the source, has also assigned a task to the National Crisis Management Cell (NCMC) to compile data of organisations involved in raising funds for Jihad and frame a comprehensive policy on the matter.

The ministry has also assigned the NCMC the task to find out the source of such funds being received by the Jihadi and as well as others organisations.

Jihadi organisations have stepped up their attacks against Interior Minister Moinuddin Haider, accusing him of unleashing propaganda against them to appease his "U.S. masters" and vowed to resist these moves, calling also for the resignation of the minister.

In their separate statements, the heads of Jihadi organisations have also apparently ignored warnings by the government that an audit of the funds of Jihadi organisations would be conducted.

Some of them, however, said they had their own system of audit and accounts and any responsible person could check that any time.

Maulana Shah Ahmed Noorani, head of the Jamiat Ulema-e-Pakistan (JUP), meanwhile, joined the Jihadi groups in condemning the announcement of the interior minister that the fund raising campaigns in the name of Jihad would be banned.

"The government does not have the right to interfere with such issues," Noorani said but did not oppose the idea of government checks on accounts of the Jihadi organisations.

He advised the chief executive to avoid the policy of confrontation with the Jihadi organisations and instead direct the interior minister to pay attention to the law and order situation. Another demand, he made was that the general take stern action against non-governmental organisations (NGOs) that were working against the ideology of Islam.

The JUP chief, who is an influential religious leader in Pakistan and was also instrumental in the removal of Zulfikar Ali Bhutto's PPP government back in late seventies through the PNA forum, said that if the government insisted on its stance, a joint strategy would soon be mapped out.

Lashkar-e-Tayyeba chief Hafiz Mohammad Saeed, who supported calls by other such groups for the resignation of interior minister, said that the leaders of Jihadi organisations would soon be meeting the chief executive to apprise him of the situation.