ISLAMABAD, Pakistan (Islamweb & News Agencies) - Several hundred hard-line Islamists vowed Sunday to block the deployment of U.N. monitors along Pakistan's border with Afghanistan, saying that it compromised the country's sovereignty.(Read photo caption below)
``People of Pakistan won't tolerate the presence of U.N. monitors on their soil,'' Sami-ul Haq, who leads Pakistan-Afghan Defense Council, told his supporters at a rally in the capital, Islamabad.
The U.N. monitors would be deployed to stop weapons shipments allegedly sent by Pakistan to Afghanistan's ruling Taliban militia, who are fighting a northern-based opposition. The U.N. Security Council approved their deployment last month, but set no date for when they would be dispatched.
The council, comprising 35 religious and Islamic militant groups, was established in Pakistan to support the Taliban against U.N. sanctions imposed earlier this year.
Sunday's rally was the first in the council's countrywide campaign to try keeping the military-led government from permitting deployment of the U.N. monitors.
People living in the tribal areas close to the border with Afghanistan will revolt if Pakistan allows the monitors, Haq warned. ``We will sacrifice our lives to stop them,'' he said.
Pakistan's religious groups are particularly strong in the deeply conservative regions that border Afghanistan. Pakistan is considered the Taliban's staunchest ally, and many Pakistani Islamic groups want a strict Islamic system imposed on their country as in Afghanistan.
The government, however, denies sending weapons and military advisers to aid the Taliban.
``Any attack on Afghanistan would be considered an assault on Islam,'' read a large banner at Sunday's rally.
The United Nations imposed sanctions on the Taliban, who rule almost 95 percent of Afghanistan, to press them to hand over Saudi dissident, Osama bin Laden for trial in connection with the 1998 bombings of two U.S. embassies in East Africa that killed 224 people.
The sanctions include an arms embargo against the Taliban, but not against their northern-based opposition alliance.
The United Nations is to send 15 experts to countries bordering Afghanistan - China, Iran, Pakistan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan - to help enforce the sanctions.
Pakistan criticizes the one-sided arms embargo as fueling the civil war in Afghanistan but says it will abide by the Security Council decision.
PHOTO CAPTION:
Partcipants of an anti-United Nations rally chant slogans against the presence of U.N. observers in Pakistan to monitor the sanctions on Afghanistan, Sunday, Aug. 26, 2001 at rally in Islamabad, Pakistan. They also chanted anti-American slogans. (AP Photo/Tariq Aziz)
- Aug 26 11:35 AM ET