Reuters and AP, KATMANDU, Nepal and ISLAMABAD, pakistan
Pakistani authorities have rounded up more than 100 hardline Islamic activists, including members of Kashmiri militant groups blamed by India for last month's attack on its parliament, police said yesterday.
The detentions came as diplomatic efforts to defuse a military standoff between India and Pakistan gathered pace while the two countries' leaders are due at a regional summit opening in Nepal today.
Pakistani provincial police sources said central authorities had passed them the names of hundreds of Muslim militants to be held for questioning and the sweep for them would go on.
Police in central Punjab province said that about 120 members of militant groups were picked up in overnight sweeps in several cities in the province.
"Most of these people belong to Sipah-e-Sahaba and Tehrik-e-Jaffria," a police official in Multan city said. The rival hardline groups are from the majority Sunni and minority Shia Muslim communities respectively and have often been accused of involvement in sectarian violence.
The former group is in a loose alliance of Islamic groups that includes the two militant groups fighting Indian rule in disputed Kashmir and blamed by New Delhi for a bloody attack on parliament in the Indian capital on Dec. 13.
Several members of the the two Kashmiri groups -- Lashkar-e-Taiba and Jaish-e-Mohammad -- were among those detained for questioning, police said.
There was a defiant response yesterday from a Lashkar spokesman who claimed the sweep would only lead to greater cooperation between militant groups.
"We will continue our struggle despite the government crackdown," said Yahya Mujahid. "All the jihadi [holy war] organizations will now operate more closely."
The South Asian summit where Indian and Pakistani leaders were to meet yesterday for the first time since they went on war alert was postponed by a day because of the fog-delayed arrival of Pakistan's president.
President Pervez Musharraf arrived more than four hours late aboard a Chinese aircraft, forcing a delay in the opening of the summit, but still in time to meet Indian Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee at a night dinner hosted by Nepal's King Gyanendra last night.
Musharraf said he couldn't be sure whether there would be a substantive meeting with Vajpayee, adding, "It's not a one-sided effort."
Despite the movement of tens of thousands of troops to their border and talk of war by both leaders, they have also said they want peace.
Vajpayee said before arriving in Nepal that diplomacy could avert war, but he had no plans to hold a meeting with Musharraf.
"Both sides should be willing to talk," Musharraf said when he arrived in Nepal. "If both sides are willing to talk, there will be talks."
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