M A I N   N E W S

Kulsoom under house arrest

ISLAMABAD, July 9 (DPA) — The Pakistani police today continued its guard around the Lahore residence of the deposed Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, confining his wife to the house and frustrating her rally against the military regime, witnesses said.

The police continued its blockade of roads leading up to the Sharif residence in Lahore’s posh Model Town district. Mr Sharif’s wife Kulsoom Nawaz has been inside her house since her nine-hour standoff with the authorities yesterday.

“No one was being allowed to go in or come out of the building,” a journalist who viewed the situation in Model Town early today told DPA on the phone from Lahore.

He believed Kulsoom was effectively under house detention. He said the police has confirmed not allowing the lady to go ahead with her march.

Kulsoom Nawaz had given a call to Mr Sharif’s Pakistan Muslim League (PML) party activists to rally with her yesterday from Lahore, capital of Pakistan’s central Punjab province, to the northwestern provincial capital of Peshawar.

Kulsoom said she wanted to collect funds for drought-hit people in Pakistan’s south and western areas and had no political plans.

But the police and administration officials said they had orders to break her march since a ban imposed by the military government was in place on such political activities.

Meanwhile, Pakistan military government’s crackdown on the Pakistan Muslim League continued today with the arrest of 70 of its activists who held a meeting to protest the recent police action against party members ahead of a planned rally.

The police said at least 70 PML activists had gathered at Rawalpindi to protest against the police crackdown on party members, including Kulsoom Nawaz, to prevent yesterday’s proposed cross-country rally.