Pakistan cartoon rallies low key

By Zaffar Abbas
BBC News, Islamabad

Protest meetings were much smaller than those earlier in the month

A call by Pakistan's six-party Islamic alliance (MMA) for demonstrations over cartoons satirising the Prophet Muhammad has met a low-key response.

Protest meetings were held in several cities, but were much smaller than those witnessed earlier in the month.

Senior MMA leaders said their campaign would continue - but with paramilitary troops assisting riot police in most cities, the rallies remained peaceful.

Five people have died in Pakistan's cartoon protests in the past two weeks.

The biggest protest rallies were expected to be in Lahore and Islamabad, where two of the MMA's most senior leaders were to address the gatherings.

But neither of the two meetings attracted more than a few hundred supporters of the Islamic groups.

'House arrest'

An MMA spokesman said alliance leader Qazi Hussain Ahmed was prevented from leaving his residence inside the Jamaat-i-Islami party headquarters to address a rally.

The MMA says bigger rallies will take place in coming weeks

He said that the MMA president was under virtual house arrest.

Mr Ahmed earlier led the prayers in the compound's main mosque, at which he vowed to continue the protest campaign.

In Lahore, dozens of women from a religious organisation gathered outside the Lahore Press Club and chanted slogans against the publication of the cartoons.

Meanwhile, a few hundred supporters of a Shia group, the Imamia Students' Organisation (ISO), took part in a processions in another residential district to condemn the bombing of the holy shrines in Iraq.

Rally ban

In Islamabad, just over 300 people gathered outside a mosque in a residential district, where the MMA's secretary general Maulana Fazlur Rehman led the protest.

Addressing supporters and other participants at Friday prayers, he claimed that bigger rallies would be organised in the coming days and weeks.

He also condemned President Pervez Musharraf and other government leaders for adopting a pro-Western stance on all issues.

Protest rallies in Quetta, Peshawar and Karachi were also attended by a few hundred people, but reports from Muzaffarabad, in Pakistan-administered Kashmir, and the tribal region of South Waziristan say several thousand people took part in protests there.

Meanwhile, a senior member of the MMA said that despite a ban imposed by the Punjab government, they were going ahead with a plan to hold a big protest rally in Lahore on Sunday.

A spokesman for the Punjab government has already declared that the ban will not be relaxed for the rally, and the authorities intend to take strict action if anyone tries to break the law.