20000130

Musharraf to review security after bombs

KARACHI: Pakistan's military ruler, Gen. Pervez Musharraf, will discuss security with army commanders in Karachi on Saturday, a day after two bomb explosions killed three people and wounded dozens more.

Officials said Musharraf was also expected to meet top provincial officials on Sunday for what an army spokesman said would be a session on law and order.

His meetings follows a mosque bomb attack that killed three and wounded 40 in a suburban Afghan refugee settlement on Friday, an hour after another bomb injured three in a local courthouse in the southern business district.

Police said they had detained one suspect for questioning over the mosque bomb but gave no further details.

Officials on Friday blamed Indian intelligence agents for masterminding the two attacks but a fax received at the Reuters office in Karachi on the letter head of an little-known group "Al-Nawaz" claimed responsibility for the bombings.

The letter said they were "True Loyalists" of former prime minister Nawaz Sharif who was ousted in a military-coup in October. It was not immediately known how seriously police were taking the claim.

"This campaign of terror will continue until the Chief of the army staff General Pervez Musharraf restores the democratically elected government of our beloved and great leader Mohammad Nawaz Sharif" it said.

The site of the first blast was several kilometres away from an Anti-Terrorism Court where Sharif is being tried for hijacking, terrorism and attempted murder.

Newspapers have reported in the past the same group had claimed responsibility for bomb attacks in Karachi and Hyderabad in the Sindh province.

A spokesman for the military government said on Friday India's Research and Analysis Wing (RAW) intelligence agency was responsible.

India wants Pakistan to be declared a terrorist state for backing militants fighting Indian rule in the Himalayan region of Kashmir. Pakistan disputes Indian rule of Kashmir.

Relations between the two nations, always tense, worsened in late December when hijackers took over an Indian Airlines plane en route to Delhi and forced to to go to southern Afghanistan. India says Pakistan was involved, a charge Islamabad has robustly denied.-Reuters