ISLAMABAD, 25 January 2008 — Police yesterday defused a roadside bomb minutes before opposition leader Nawaz Sharif was due to pass the spot in the northwestern city of Peshawar.
Former Prime Minister Sharif was traveling in a convoy to address a lawyers’ convention and a political rally in the city near the Afghan border ahead of elections on Feb. 18.
The discovery comes four weeks after fellow opposition leader Benazir Bhutto was assassinated in a gun-and-bomb attack at an election meeting in Rawalpindi.
“We recovered a 400 gram bomb fitted with a timer beneath a main bridge near the high court on the route that Sharif was to take. We have defused it,” bomb disposal squad official Hukam Khan said.
Ijaz Khan, a senior police officer, said the bomb was found wrapped in a plastic shopping bag. “It was planted on the road that Nawaz Sharif was to pass. When policemen were searching the area they found it and immediately called in bomb disposal staff who defused it,” Khan said.
A spokesman for Sharif said their convoy had been halted about a kilometer before it reached the area.
Officials have said in the past that Sharif and other politicians are targets of militants trying to destabilize the country. Four of Sharif’s supporters were killed in a gun attack on his convoy in Rawalpindi the day Benazir was killed.
Later addressing a workers’ convention in Peshawar, Sharif said Pakistanis would have to take very difficult and tough decisions to salvage the country from the present crisis. But he was confident the Pakistani nation was up to it and did not need outside help to do that.
He said the restoration of an independent judiciary and the reinstatement of sacked judges was on his party’s agenda. “If my party (Pakistan Muslim League) returns to power, we will not work with President Musharraf.”
Addressing the Peshawar High Court Bar Association, Sharif thanked lawyers for opposing the president. “Politicians could not do what lawyers did for the country,” he said.
Meanwhile, the military said yesterday that security forces have cleared militant strongholds from three areas in the South Waziristan region on the Afghan border and 40 militants and eight soldiers have been killed in the fighting.
The army is sending in reinforcements and tanks after a week of fighting with militants loyal to a Taleban commander the government said was behind the assassination of Benazir.
The clashes, in which nearly 150 militants and more than 20 government soldiers have been killed, has raised fresh concern about Pakistan in the run-up to the Feb. 18 election.
Security forces had carried out operations in three parts of South Waziristan, the military said. “These areas have been cleared of militant strongholds and hide-outs,” the military said in a statement.
“Forty miscreants have been killed in the last 24 hours and 30 miscreants have been apprehended while many have been injured,” the military said. Eight soldiers were killed and 32 wounded.
The fighting is in strongholds of militant chief Baitullah Mehsud, who the United States has also said was behind Benazir assassination. Mehsud has been blamed for a string of attacks in a suicide bomb campaign that intensified after commandos stormed a mosque complex in Islamabad last July. Last week his men attacked and captured another fort in Waziristan.
Security forces have been battling Al-Qaeda-linked militants in South Waziristan for several years. The mountainous region, occupied by conservative, independent-minded Pashtun tribesmen, has never come under the full authority of any government.
Militants in South and North Waziristan also attack US- and NATO-led foreign forces and Afghan government troops across the border in Afghanistan.
Separately, three activists from a Pashtun party opposed to militants were gunned down in the Swat valley in North West Frontier Province, where the military launched an offensive against armed followers of a radical cleric in November.
The United States and other allies hope next month’s election will restore political stability after months of turmoil.
Adm. William Fallon, the head of the US military’s Central Command, visited Pakistan for talks with army chief Gen. Ashfaq Kiyani on Tuesday. Fallon told reporters in Florida last week that Pakistan was increasingly willing to fight militants and accept US help, without saying what kind of support.

http://www.arabnews.com/?page=4&sect...category=World