NYT : Pakistani President Tells Militants: Surrender or Die

Pakistani President Tells Militants: Surrender or Die

By CARLOTTA GALL | Published: July 8, 2007

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan, Sunday, July 8 — Pakistan’s president, Gen. Pervez Musharraf, in his first comments on the five-day siege of militants in a mosque complex in the capital, said Saturday that the mosque leader and his armed followers should surrender or prepare to die.

“They should not prolong, they should surrender and hand over their weapons, otherwise they risk being killed,” he told news agencies during a visit to the flood-hit southwestern province of Baluchistan. “They have defamed Islam. They have defamed Pakistan. They have embarrassed Pakistan internationally.”

“The government has enough power and no one can stand before its might,” he said. “Our concern is for children and women and we are showing lot of patience and restraint.”

Along with the militants, male and female students and their teachers have been barricaded into the Lal Masjid, or Red Mosque, and an adjacent seminary since fighting broke out between the cleric’s followers and security forces on Tuesday.

Early on Sunday, a Pakistani Army officer, Lt. Col. Haroon Islam, died after being shot by Islamic militants while leading an overnight operation at the mosque, said local news channels, quoting security officials. Government forces have been blowing holes in the wall of the mosque complex to try to provide a path for women and children to flee.

Saturday had been mostly quiet, and 23 people left the mosque with family members, government officials said. More than a thousand students had already left. Relatives of those trapped inside waited anxiously at a makeshift camp nearby.

Tariq Azim Khan, minister of state for information and broadcasting, said Saturday: “So long as there is a single soul, woman or child in there, we don’t want to take action. We don’t want to go in barging with guns firing. We want to tire them out.”