Movement of leaders banned

In a move to restrain the street demonstrations, the authorities clamped restrictions on the movements of top leaders of three pro-Taliban extremist religious parties.

Troops were deployed at key points here yesterday as radical Islamic parties in Pakistan continued to display their anger over the government's support to the military strikes by the United States and Britain in Afghanistan.

Maulana Fazalur Rehman, chief of Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam (JUI), Maulana Azam Tariq, head of Sipah-e-Sahaba Pakistan, and Maulana Samiul Haq, who leads his own faction of JUI, have been placed under house arrest in their home towns of Dera Ismail Khan, Jhang and Akora Khattak respectively for a month.

Despite heavy police turnout, workers and supporters of religious parties staged rallies yesterday in several major cities, including Rawalpindi, Lahore and Peshawar, burning U.S. President George Bush in effigy, witnesses said.

The protesters, many of them armed with sticks, paraded through the streets chanting anti-U.S. slogans and condemning Pakistani President General Pervez Musharraf. There were no immediate reports of violence.

There is deep pro-Taliban sentiment in the ethnic Pashtun community in the North-West Frontier Province and Balochistan, the main areas of influence of JUI led by Maulana Rehman.

The radical groups run a chain of religious schools, widely considered as breeding grounds of religious militancy.

President Musharraf continues to see no threat to his government from the ongoing protest campaign. He reiterated on Monday that those opposing him were a small minority while he had the support of the vast majority of the countrymen.

The religious parties‚ mass mobilisation drive has drawn insignificant public response until now in Punjab, home to 60 per cent of the country's 140 million people, with similar situation in most parts of Sindh, the second largest province.

Jamaat-e-Islami leader Qazi Hussain Ahmed, addressing a news conference at his residence in Peshawar, bitterly condemned the action taken against the three religious leaders.

"Musharraf's support to attacks on Afghanistan is immoral. The people of Pakistan reject his policy," Ahmad said, vowing that the protest campaign would continue until the "aggression ends."

"By supporting the U.S. conspiracy against Afghanistan, the president has hurt the sentiments of Muslims not only in Pakistan but also throughout the Islamic world, the Jamaat leader said.