President General Pervez Musharraf has vowed that no other Madressah (religious seminary) or mosque in Pakistan will be allowed to take the law into their own hands as Lal Masjid and Jamia Hafsa did. We will not let any mosque and seminary follow Lal Masjid and Jamia Hafsa, Musharraf said in a televised address to the nation on Thursday night. I am an ardent supporter of seminaries but these kinds of seminaries will not be allowed to function in Pakistan, the president said. He said that militancy, extremism and terrorism would be crushed in Pakistan. We have yet to achieve our goals to get rid of these menaces, he added. The president expressed grief over the killings during the operation against militants and extremists in Lal Masjid and Jamia Hafsa, but said the government was forced to take them head on. We have succeeded in this operation but this is not a time to rejoice; those who had been killed were our own people but they had detracted from the right path. The operation had become inevitable, Musharraf said. He blamed Lal Masjid deputy chief cleric Abdul Rashid Ghazi, who was killed in the operation, for the failure of last-ditch talks to reach a peaceful solution, saying his demands were unacceptable. Ghazi wanted a safe passage for himself and amnesty for all his comrades and a safe passage for the foreigners hiding there, the president said. --more
