LAHORE, Nov 26: Interior Minister Moin Haider said on Monday the US was behind Osama and it could bombard any area wherever the Saudi dissident went.

The minister was responding to President George Bush’s reported remarks that US would even attack Pakistan and Kashmir if Osama took refuge there.

Replying to another question, he said the government was striving hard for the safe return of the Pakistanis besieged by the Northern Alliance in various parts of Afghanistan.

He said president Gen Pervez Musharraf had talked to British prime minister Tony Blair and UN secretary general Kofi Annan and other world leaders on the issue.

He told another questioner that the arrested religious leaders against whom FIRs had been registered would face legal action.

The interior minister denied reports that any agreement had been reached with Nawaz Sharif or Benazir Bhutto for their return to the country. “Ms Bhutto will have to face court cases on her return to the country,” he said.

Speaking at a book launching earlier, the minister said the Taliban leadership had ‘dodged’ Islamabad on the issue of training Pakistanis as well as other nationals in Afghanistan.

He said the people, most of them “captive students” of religious seminaries who had left for Jihad in Afghanistan recently were maltreated there by the Afghans and now they wanted to return to their country. “We would allow them to return but after seizing their arms.”

Mr Haider said Afghan refugees could not be permitted to damage Pakistan property during their protest against the US. Already, he said, 42 ‘trouble-makers’ had been driven back to Afghanistan through Chaman.

About the preparation of lists of the Pakistanis active in the occupied Kashmir, he said “our own brothers are preparing these lists by publishing the news about the funeral prayers of the local people martyred in Kashmir.”

This would deeply hurt the nation in the long-run, Haider said.

About a broad-based government in Pakistan, he said it would only be possible if the masses gave a split mandate during the next general elections.

He defended Gen Musharraf’s decision of siding with the allied forces during attack on Afghanistan, saying the government had achieved all its targets — security of the country and its nuclear installations, world support for its stance on the Kashmir issue and economic revival.

However, he admitted that on the economic front Pakistan was being given on a paltry relief.

Former Punjab governor Shahid Hamid said the Indian desire to have its hegemony in the region was the main hurdle in the maintenance of peace in the area. He said national economy must be improved for a better security of the country as the increasing poverty might cause emergence of prejudices like provincialism.

Saying that there was no military solution possible for the Kashmir issue, he urged the authorities to keep the “flame of freedom” burning in Kashmir. A war might also erupt on the Line of Control (LoC) due to this policy but Pakistan should accept this risk, he said.

Mr Hamid opposed international mediation on Kashmir, saying America and other powers would prefer that the LoC be accepted as the international border.

He called for the formation of a body to help solve the October 1999-like crisis in future and, if need be, the Constitution should be amended in this regard.

Former Punjab governor Hanif Ramay said the military government should not take the people for granted and take them into confidence on affairs of national importance.

He said Pakistan’s foreign policy had been a failure in the past and the authorities should take steps so that it should not be so in case of the Kashmir issue.

He feared that the world powers were taking some decision on Kashmir in the name of regional peace and this decision might hurt the interests of both the parties in the dispute. He urged Pakistan and India to take steps to solve the issue politically on their own.