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Low turnout for anti-American protests in Pakistan
ISLAMABAD, Pakistan (CNN) -- Members of Pakistan's Islamic parties demonstrated Friday against possible U.S. military action against Iraq, but turnout was much smaller than organizers had hoped, officials said. Pakistan's president, Gen. Pervez Musharraf, has said Pakistan won't participate in a U.S.-Iraq war. Foreign Ministry spokesman Aziz Ahmed Khan told CNN that Pakistan wants a peaceful resolution to the standoff over U.N. demands that Iraq abandon its alleged pursuit of nuclear, biological or chemical weapons, but would go along with any U.N. resolution on the issue. Baghdad has repeatedly denied possessing such weapons. President Bush has threatened U.S.-led military action if Iraq fails to comply with U.N. resolutions. In Islamabad Friday, 400-500 people turned out for a demonstration by the Muttahida Majlis-e Amal, a coalition of Pakistan's religious parties that controls two provincial legislatures.
The largest turnout was in the MMA stronghold of Peshawar, capital of Pakistan's North-West Frontier province, where about 8,000 people listened to speeches by leaders of the coalition's two largest parties. "An attack on Iraq by the United States would not only be an attack on the Iraqi people, it would be an attack on all Muslims of the world," said Maulana Fazl-ur Rahman, the leader of Pakistan's Jamiat-Ulema-Islam party. Pakistan's cooperation in the U.S.-led war on terrorism has angered the country's Islamic leaders, who want U.S. troops and investigators to leave. But attendance at Friday's demonstrations was much lower than for protests during the U.S.-led war in Afghanistan in late 2001. In Karachi, Pakistan's largest city, about 2,000 people showed up, officials said. In Rawalpindi, fewer than 1,000 people turned out. Anti-American sentiment in Pakistan has been aggravated by an incident along the Afghanistan border last weekend that left a U.S. soldier wounded. During that incident, a U.S. warplane dropped a 500-pound bomb on a building where the soldier's attacker -- who wore the uniform of Pakistan's border scouts -- was holed up. U.S. and Pakistani officials said the airstrike occurred inside Afghanistan, but Islamic parties in North-West Frontier's provincial assembly said the target struck was a religious school on the Pakistani side of the border. Lawmakers passed a resolution demanding Pakistan's federal government file a protest with U.S. officials over the incident. The man who shot the soldier was captured and is in Pakistani custody. CNN Islamabad bureau chief Ash-har Quraishi contributed to this report.
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An attack on Iraq by the United States would not only be an attack on the Iraqi people, it would be an attack on all Muslims of the world. 
