LAHORE, July 10: Former army chief Gen Mirza Aslam Beg on Tuesday assailed the government for operation against the militants holed up in the Lal Masjid complex, saying all killings could have been averted by resolving the matter through talks.

He alleged that the government deliberately prolonged the standoff between the clerics and the security forces and allowed the death toll to rise to strengthen suspicions of the Western countries that Pakistan was the hub of militancy and military training was being imparted to students of religious seminaries.

He told this correspondent that talks with the clerics had been sabotaged by the vested interests to pave the way for the operation, which would come to an end now that Maulana Abdur Rashid Ghazi and his supporters have been killed in the daylong crossfire.

In his assessment a strong countrywide reaction would start against the killings as a result of which a big political change would take place at the national level.

Gen Beg said it would have been a better strategy if the government had allowed the clerics, the militants and the students to leave the premises. Heavens would not have fallen if the militants had joined their friends in tribal areas, where the intelligence agencies could trace and kill them at a later stage.

Answering a question, Gen Beg said a brigadier rather than a corps commander could have led the operation as it was not a very big assignment.

He was all praise for the professional capability of the commandos who carried out the operation.

Normally, he said maximum force was used in minimum time to overpower the enemy. But, he said a different strategy was adopted for the Lal Masjid and Jamia Hafsa as women and children were also inside. The operation, he said, could have been completed in half an hour but was continued for eight days to ensure the safety of women and children.

The former army chief recalled that some 700 troops were killed in Waziristan in clashes with the militants. Still, he said, the government had held talks with the very same people and withdrawn troops from the area.

He said the Lal Masjid clerics should have been allowed a safe exit to resolve the matter. But President Musharraf’s “surrender or die” warning to militants changed the situation. Those holed up in the mosque and the seminary were convinced that the government was going to launch an operation to wipe them out. To face the challenge, the militants started gathering weapons.

He recalled that as president and army chief Gen Zia had set up a chain of seminaries in areas bordering Afghanistan to train Jihadis against the Soviet occupation of the neighbouring country. US Marines, he said, were also among the trainers.

He said once he had asked about the need for such seminaries and Gen Zia had told him that they were custodians of country’s ideological frontiers and academies for military training to those who wanted to fight against the Soviet occupation.

Gen Beg said by now the intelligence agencies must have gathered information about all seminaries in the country and the kind of activities they were involved in.