PAKISTAN: Pakistan has moved to allay Western fears about terrorist attacks by promising new measures to crack down on Islamic militants in the country.
The announcement by President Pervez Musharraf follows a series of attacks on US citizens in Pakistan in recent months, including the bombing of a Protestant church last weekend and the kidnapping and murder of the US journalist, Daniel Pearl.
These attacks have caused widespread fear in the international community here and prompted the US this weekend to order the departure of all its non-essential diplomats and their families.
They have also dented Gen Musharraf's image as the West's new best friend, a status he earned for his co-operation with US military action in Afghanistan.
In a televised address on Saturday, Pakistan Day, marking the country's first major moves toward independence from Britain in 1947, the president pledged to "identify and eliminate those involved in terrorism".
"The entire system needs basic changes," he said. Intelligence services need to work towards preventing acts of terror rather than simply responding when outrages have occurred.
Five people, two of them Americans, were killed in last week's attack on a Presbyterian church in the heavily guarded diplomatic enclave of Islamabad. FBI agents were still combing the site yesterday in search of clues.
Mr Gary Allen, an American missionary who survived the attack, described yesterday what happened on St Patrick's Day: "Twenty minutes into the service, a man burst into the church. It was like he was sowing seeds, only they were grenades."
Many of the 45 people injured in the attack are still in hospital. A number of Irish people normally attend the international church, butmany missed last week's service because of St Patrick's Day festivities the evening before.
At the nearby Catholic church, security has been increased since the attack. Three of the four entrances to the grounds of Our Lady of Fatima Catholic Church have been bricked up and the remaining entrance is guarded by armed soldiers who search the bags of all who enter. Yesterday's Palm Sunday celebration was moved indoors on security advice.
However, the local parish priest, Father John Nevin, who hails from Maynooth and has been in Pakistan since 1965, says he is not nervous.
"Over the years, we've lurched from one crisis to another here but, if anything, President Musharraf has brought more tolerance."
Pakistan Day is normally marked by shows of military might, but these were subdued this year as much of the army has been called up to guard the border with India.
Also on Saturday, police in the eastern city of Lahore rounded up dozens of opposition party leaders to block a rally against the president. Police defended the arrests of members of the Alliance for Restoration of Democracy, arguing that a protest would disrupt law and order in the country.
AFP adds:
Gen Tommy Franks, the commander of US troops in Afghanistan, said yesterday that while US forces had found "evidence of the attempt" by al-Qaeda to develop weapons of mass destruction, no such weapons have been found.
Gen Franks told NBC television that US forces in Kandahar, Afghanistan, found "evidence of the attempt by bin Laden to get his hands on weapons of mass destruction, anthrax or a variety" of other such weapons.
"We have not yet found a place where we see weaponised weapons of mass destruction - "weaponised" meaning the capability to create the ingredient and then put it in some form of delivery," he told the programme, Meet the Press.