Thousands of protestors poured into the streets of Pakistan Sunday following the arrest of a senior Islamic cleric amid speculation the United States is about to launch a military strike against neighboring Afghanistan.
In central and northern Pakistan, up to 7,000 protestors shouted "Death to America" and demanded the release of Fazlur Rahman, head of the fundamentalist Jamiat-Ulema-Islam (JUI) party.
Rahman was placed under house arrest earlier Sunday. He has called for a jihad, or holy war, against the United States and led anti-US rallies across the country since the September 11 destruction in New York and Washington.
In Multan, central Pakistan, more than 6,000 people chanted "Long Live Taliban" and "War against America will continue until its destruction," as they crowded a shopping area before marching to a public park.
The gathering was addressed by local religious leaders who rejected evidence linking Saudi dissident Osama bin Laden to the suicide attacks on the Pentagon and World Trade Center as "US propaganda."
A JUI spokesman said authorities wanted to prevent the pro-Taliban and anti-US gathering which Rahman had planned in Multan, a major city in the populous Punjab province.
The JUI leader, in speeches to previous rallies, had strongly attacked Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf for extending support to the US-led campaign against terrorism.
Afghanistan's Taliban regime is facing the threat of US military reprisals for its refusal to hand over bin Laden -- the Saudi-born dissident fingered by the US as the mastermind behind last month's terrorist attacks.
Rahman has also denounced British Prime Minister Tony Blair's announcement in Islamabad on Friday that Britain and Pakistan had agreed on the need for a "broad-based government" to replace the Taliban.
Another 500 JUI supporters staged a demonstration outside a mosque in northwestern Peshawar to press the party's demand for Rehman's release.
Chanting slogans against US President George W. Bush and Musharraf they warned of countrywide rallies if Rahman was not released immediately.
But in southwest Pakistan, some 3,000 protestors marched through the streets of Quetta to distance themselves from the Taliban regime and call for peace talks to install a broad-based government in Kabul.
"This is very good," said 18-year-old Khalid Gada. "We don't want to see war, they must solve this problem by talking."
Protestors in Quetta carried the former flag of King Mohammad Zahir Shah, and demanded he head a Loya Jirga, a special meeting of Afghan religious, tribal and ethnic leaders.
Zahir Shah was ousted by a coup in 1973 amid communist infiltration in Afghanistan that resulted in an invasion by the Soviet Union in 1979 and its subsequent 10-year occupation.
But in the past month the former monarch has been the focus of diplomatic efforts to establish an alternative broad-based government capable of replacing the ultra-orthodox Taliban regime -- MULTAN, Pakistan (AFP)
© 2001 Al Bawaba (www.albawaba.com)
