Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf said on Friday suicide bombers from an al Qaeda-linked militant group are holed up in a mosque in the centre of the capital, Islamabad.

Authorities have been locked in a tense standoff for months with clerics and students associated with Lal Masjid, the Red Mosque, who are pushing for imposition of Taliban-style social values in Islamabad. Clerics at the mosque had threatened suicide attacks if government used force against them.

Speaking to reporters, Musharraf said militants of Jaish-e-Mohammad, an al Qaeda-linked group fighting in the Kashmir region, were hiding in the mosque. “They are indoctrinated people,” he told a workshop on journalism.
“There are also people associated to Jaish-e-Mohammad. They have explosives. Many of them are ready to carry out suicide attacks,” he added.

Musharraf, who survived two al Qaeda-inspired assassination attempts, said the government had tried to resolve the standoff through negotiations to avoid bloodshed in the sprawling mosque complex, which also houses a religious seminary or madrasa. “Action is ready but timing is important,” he said. “I am not a coward person ... but the issue is tomorrow you will say what have you done. There are women and children inside,” he said.
Lal mosque has long been known as a headquarters of pro-Taliban radicals in Islamabad but trouble began in January when female students attached to the mosque occupied a library next to their madrasa to protest over a campaign to remove mosques built illegally on state land.

In March, students abducted three Pakistani women they accused of running a brothel and held them for several days before forcing them to confess and releasing them.

They have also abducted and briefly held policemen, and warned video shops to stop selling Western and Indian films they deemed obscene.

They caused a huge embarrassment for the government last week when they abducted nine people, including six Chinese women, from a massage centre, accusing them of running a brothel. The detainees were released after about 17 hours.

China is Pakistan’s most steadfast ally and Chinese officials told the visiting Pakistani interior minister this week to better safeguard their nationals and businesses in Pakistan.

Maulana Abdul Aziz, chief cleric of the mosque, said his followers would carry out suicide attacks if the government used force.

“If the government carried out an operation then we will follow the way of jihad (Muslim holy war) ... our male and female students can carry out suicide attack as a last option,” he told Reuters, his face covered with a scarf.
Rising radical Muslim activities, commonly known as “Talibanisation”, coupled with authorities’ failure to rein them in, has dismayed many in the relatively cosmopolitan capital.