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ISLAMABAD: Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf Monday appointed a former prime minister to lead last-ditch talks with militants holed up with women and children in an Islamabad mosque, officials said.
At a meeting with top officials, Musharraf authorised Chaudhry Shujaat Hussain, who served as premier for three months in 2004, to work with a delegation of leading Islamic scholars to persuade the rebels to surrender.
"The meeting authorised Chaudhry Shujaat Hussain to make a real last-ditch effort to convince the militants holding women and children to release them," a senior government official who attended the talks told AFP.
Musharraf emphasised that the priority continues to be to save the women and children inside the Red Mosque, whom the government says are being held by the militants as human shields.
"They must be released by the hostage-takers," the official quoted the president as saying.
So far, 24 people have died since last week in the standoff at the mosque between government forces and the rebels, said to include foreign fighters and insurgents with links to Osama bin Laden's Al-Qaeda network.
The official would not say what the government is offering in return to the mosque's de facto chief, Abdul Rashid Ghazi, and the militants.
"Shujaat will be meeting a delegation of Ulema (scholars) soon," the official said.
Islamist sources said earlier that efforts were also under way to use senior members from banned militant organisations to put pressure on Ghazi.
They said they were also trying to arrange a telephone talk between Ghazi and his brother Abdul Aziz, the leader of the mosque, who fled the fortified complex dressed in a woman's burqa on Wednesday.
There was no official confirmation of those efforts.
Officials said on Sunday that Ghazi had lost control of the situation inside the mosque. The resistance was now being run by Islamic militants with close ties to Osama bin Laden's Al-Qaeda network, they said. - AFP/yy
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