LONDON, Jan 11: Prime Minister Gordon Brown wants all political prisoners to be released before Feb 18 elections in Pakistan which he said should be held in a free and fair way and without intimidation and censorship.

He insisted if these elections are to be held valid by the international community they have got to be held in a free and fair way and that there is neither intimidation, nor is there censorship, nor are there political prisoners who have not been released by election time.

When asked at his weekly press conference, if he was satisfied with the measures being taken by President Musharraf to hold general elections, Mr Brown said proper monitoring of the election was needed because as he put it there were several thousand polling stations in the country.

He said it was very important that the Pakistan elections were free and fair and that everything was done to show the international community that all the barriers and obstacles that existed a few weeks ago to there being free and fair elections had been removed.

Adding, he said, it was tragic that “we have faced the assassination of Benazir Bhutto, it is tragic that there has been so much loss of life in the country, it is tragic that there is still controversy over what happened when Ms Bhutto died.”

That is why, he said, he had asked the Metropolitan Police to provide some help to the Pakistani authorities in investigating what had happened.

Answering another question regarding the assertion from the Bishop of Rochester that some areas of Britain had been turned into no-go areas by Muslim extremists and that Britain's Christian heritage was being undermined by multiculturalism, the prime minister said he knew that there were pressures in many areas of the country but refused to accept that there were or should be no-go areas in any part of the country.

“And I do believe that Britain's Christian heritage, which underlies the establishment of the church, which the Bishop also talked about on Sunday, is an absolutely critical and essential part of the fabric of our national life,” he added.

He said he would do everything in his power and in this connection “and one of the things that I wanted to encourage, and we are encouraging -- there will be a paper on this soon -- is interfaith dialogue, bringing the different faiths together in different communities of the country.”