February 05, 2007	Monday	Muharram 16, 1428

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ISLAMABAD, Feb 4: The capital police arrested about 20 people on the outskirts of the city on Sunday on the suspicion that they had arrived to reinforce the clergy in its confrontation with the government, Dawn has learnt.

The police, however, only confirmed that it had deployed heavy forces at Tarnol and other entry points of Islamabad after receiving information that people may be arriving from other cities to back the Ulema’s stand-off over the issue of unauthorised mosques in the city.

Sunday’s arrests raised the number of people taken into custody in the two-week-old stand-off to around 50. The ugly confrontation was ignited when girl students of Madressah Hafsa attached to the Lal Masjid in Melody occupied the adjacent children’s public library in retaliation of the move to demolish “illegally built” mosques and madressahs.

Their hardline patrons in the Lal Masjid have meanwhile stiffened their stand.

They contemptuously rejected an accord reached by Wafaqul Madaris, which supervises the Madressahs in the country, with the government on ending the confrontation and the occupation of the public library.

Local officials told Dawn that Maulana Abdul Aziz, the Imam of Lal Masjid, snubbed and humiliated the members of Wafaqul Madaris when they went to him to endorse the accord they had reached with Interior Minister Aftab Ahmed Khan Sherpao on Saturday night.

Faced with the stubborn attitude of the management of the Lal Masjid and its Madressah Hafsa, the local administration is preparing itself for a showdown and get vacated the library by force, the officials said.

“We have utilised all options for peaceful solution of the on-going confrontation. We are left with no other option except using our authority to end illegal occupation of public library,” a senior official of the local administration said.

He said the Capital Development Authority (CDA) had agreed to provide alternative land for the mosque demolished or to be demolished for widening city roads. But those built on state land without any approval “would be removed at any cost”.

On the other hand the girls of Madressah Hafsa have said they would not end their occupation of the Children’s Library unless the operation against mosques was stopped.

The CDA has declared some 84 mosques in Islamabad as “unauthorised” structures. It has launched an anti-encroachment drive and has served notices on owners and managements of illegal residential, commercial and religious structures that their buildings would be pulled down.

The official said the CDA action was not targeting any particular segment of the society but illegal structures.

According to CDA, Lal Masjid and Madressah Hafsa have encroached upon public land without any authorisation.

Record suggests that only a plot sized 25x50 feet was allocated to the mosque. However, the management grabbed land of the adjoining area and annexed it with the Madressah without any permission or payment. The building of the Madressah thus erected is also without any approval and in violation of the CDA rules, the CDA says.