Pakistan Islamists vow more protests as leader freed
(AP)
Updated: 2006-02-20 20:11

MUSHARRAF TARGETED

The protests in Pakistan, in which five people died last week, have increasingly targeted President Pervez Musharraf's military-led government for its alliance with the West in the U.S.-led war on terrorism.

The secretary-general of Qazi Hussain Ahmed's Jamaat-i-Islami party, Syed Munawar Hussan, vowed on Sunday the protests would continue "until General Musharraf falls."

Despite the crackdown, police cordons, tear-gassing and warning shots, around 1,000 protesters rallied in Islamabad on Sunday where they chanted religious and anti-government slogans.

They lampooned Musharraf, who is currently on a state visit to China, as a lackey of the U.S. president and chanted "Bush has reared a dog wearing a uniform."

The MMA has been bitterly opposed to Musharraf since he reneged on a deal to give up his dual role as army chief in return for the alliance's backing for constitutional changes giving him sweeping powers.

The protesters in Islamabad demanded the recall of Pakistani ambassadors from all countries where the cartoons were published.

Pakistan has issued diplomatic protests over the cartoons and on Friday recalled its ambassador from Denmark.

On Sunday, Denmark said its ambassador to Pakistan had come home temporarily having two days earlier shut the embassy in Islamabad because of the security risk.

The editor of the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten that first printed the cartoons has apologized, and the text of the apology was printed in Saudi Arabian papers on Sunday.

A leading cleric in the northwestern Pakistani city of Peshawar has offered a reward to anyone who kills one of the Danish cartoonists responsible.