Pakistan rejects radical cleric's surrender terms

By Kamran Haider

ISLAMABAD (Reuters) - A cleric holed up in a Pakistani mosque said on Friday he and hundreds of followers were willing to surrender, but set conditions authorities rejected after three days of violence in which 19 people have died.

The government said the attempt to attach demands, including safe passage, was unacceptable and insisted cleric Abdul Rashid Ghazi release women and children being held as human shields.

Violence erupted outside the Red Mosque, or Lal Masjid, in the capital on Tuesday after months of rising tension between the authorities and the mosque's Taliban-supporting clerics and their thousands of religious student followers.

Hundreds of troops and police are surrounding the fortified mosque in a leafy central Islamabad neighborhood.

There was intermittent gunfire and explosions on Thursday and early on Friday. Interior Ministry spokesman Javed Iqbal Cheema said troops had blasted some holes in the compound walls.

The government has ordered the students to surrender and about 1,200 of them have come out. But resistance from those inside, who authorities say include militants from banned groups armed with rifles and grenades, was stiff.

Ghazi, speaking in telephone interviews from the mosque, said he wanted safe passage for himself and his followers.

"There are no militants from banned organizations among the students," Ghazi told Aaj Television.

He later told Geo TV students coming out could be screened so authorities could see none was a militant: "They should announce a ceasefire and come here and discuss a screening process."

He also asked that he and his sick mother be allowed to live in the mosque "until I make some alternative arrangements".

But the government rejected any conditions and said the only option was surrender.

"If he is sincere in his offer then first of all he should immediately release the women, girls and innocent children who are being kept there forcefully," Cheema told a news conference.

"They should leave their weapons in the mosque and come out."

Many Pakistanis welcomed the action against the clerics and their hardline students, whose behavior had been reminiscent of the Taliban in Afghanistan.

Moderate politicians and the media have for months urged President Pervez Musharraf to tackle them, but he cited concern about bloodshed and authorities tried to appease them.