ISLAMABAD Aug 25: Interior Minister Makhdoom Faisal Saleh Hayat on Tuesday held an informal meeting with the Muttahida Majlis-i-Amal (MMA) Deputy Secretary-general Liaqat Baloch in the Parliament House in a bid to convince him about the ongoing crackdown on seminaries.

Informed sources told Dawn that Mr Faisal told Mr Baloch that the action against two major seminaries of Islamabad had been taken after receiving concrete information of their involvement in anti-state activities.

He said Qari Noor Muhammad, who died in police custody in Faisalabad, was found to be having contacts with terrorists in Afghanistan through a mobile satellite telephone.

Similarly, Mr Faisal said, the Khatibs of local Lal Masjid were also maintaining contacts with a group whose members had made a plot to blow up parliament building, government installations and killing of important personalities on the occasion of the Independence Day.

The MMA leader, however, warned the minister that the total submission of the government to external pressures in its campaign against terrorists was not in the interest of the nation.

He said crackdowns and harassment of the people at the behest of the US would not auger well and the situation would further become volatile.