ISLAMABAD: A nationwide strike called by Islamist parties paralysed Pakistan on Friday as US President George Bush arrived later in the evening for the last leg of his tour of South Asia, and was expected to discuss progress in the war on terrorism in his talks with President Pervez Musharraf on Saturday.
Police in the city of Karachi fired tear gas to disperse hundreds of protesters trying to march towards the US consulate where on Thursday a suicide car bomber killed himself and three other people including the US diplomat. Police detained dozens of protesters after they threw stones at police vehicles not very far from the US mission.
The largest protest was in Multan in the central Punjab province where the opposition leader in the National Assembly, Maulana Fazl-ur-Rehman, addressed a 10,000-strong crowd.
The Muslim cleric told the protesters Bush’s visit was aimed at “enslaving the Pakistani nation and rewarding General Musharraf for his patriotism to America’’. White House national security adviser Stephen Hadley told reporters in India that Bush’s visit to Pakistan, a nation shown by polls to be among the most anti-American in the world, was not risk-free.
FBI agents, according to Pakistani officials, have joined the investigation into the attack in Karachi, where the diplomat, David Foy, his driver and a paramilitary trooper were killed. Hadley said the attack was “a reminder that we’re at war, and that Pakistan is both an ally in the war on terror and in some sense a battleground in the war on terror’’.
Bush has said that he would ask Musharraf to do more to shut down militant camps on Pakistani soil and stop cross-border infiltration — something the Afghan and Indian leaders he met earlier on his tour have complained of.
Protesters from a 1,000-strong march in Karachi chased and beat a dog wrapped in the Stars and Stripes, while chanting slogans of “Allahu akbar’’, “Taliban zindabad’’, and “Mullah Omar zindabad’’, or “God is Greatest’’, “Long live the Taliban’’ and “Long Live Mullah Omar’’. Islamist opposition leaders vowed more protests on Saturday.
