Sunni Muslims holding a rally in the devastated town of Balakot, 190km from Islamabad on Friday. The rally was held to denounce the bombing of Golden Mosque in Iraq and against the publication of cartoons and caricatures depicting the Prophet Mohammed (PBUH) in European newspapers.

ISLAMABAD: Pakistan plans to lobby the United Nations (UN) and Organisation of Islamic Conference (OIC) to make blasphemy an internationally recognised criminal offence, President Pervez Musharraf said yesterday.

“The president has assured the religious scholars that Pakistan would take up making blasphemy an internationally cognizable offence with the United Nations and OIC,” Pakistani Information Minister Sheikh Rashid said.

Rashid was briefing reporters after Musharraf held a meeting with a group of religious scholars.

Rashid said that the president told the religious scholars that Munir Akram, Pakistan’s permanent representative at the UN would also be asked to take up the issue.

“The president made it clear that the blasphemy issue was not the lone concern of either the ruling party or the opposition but it was an issue for the whole Muslim Ummah (world),” Rashid said.

“No Muslim can tolerate blasphemy against the Holy Prophet (PBUH),” Rashid quoted Musharraf as saying.

The Pakistani president said the government would not allow burning of public properties in pretext of protest against the drawings.

He said the cartoon issue should not be politicized as the whole nation is united on it.

Religious scholars from the alliance of religious seminaries Wafaq-ul-Madaris called for an international anti-blasphemy legislation to avoid recurrence of the act in future.

The delegation called on the president and discussed with him protest against offending cartoons and other issues.

Meanwhile, in Lahore some 150 people have been arrested in Pakistan on the eve of a major protest over cartoons of the Prophet Mohammed (PBUH), a leading Islamic leader said yesterday, although police denied his claims.

Qazi Hussain Ahmed, who himself has been detained twice by police, said today’s rally in the eastern city of Lahore against the “blasphemous cartoons” would go ahead despite a government ban on protests.

“The police have arrested some 150 of our workers from mosques, madrassas and homes after raids ahead of Sunday’s protest rally in Lahore,” said Ahmed, chief of the main opposition Muttahida Majlis-e-Amal (MMA) alliance.

Police contested the figure and said that only seven to eight people had been detained in connection with the rioting last week.

“We have arrested only seven to eight people for their involvement in violent incidents last week,” Lahore police chief Aamir Zulfiqar said.

Ahmed said he intended to lead today’s rally in Lahore.

“I am not detained or arrested and would go out to lead the rally,” he said from the headquarters of Jamaat-e-Islami, Pakistan’s largest religious party.

However, a senior government official said that Ahmed had refused to receive his detention orders on Friday which had been pasted on a wall near the main gate of his party headquarters.

“If he defied the detention order of ban on rallies, police will have to arrest him,” he said.

The government has deployed extra police and security guards to patrol the city and maintain the calm.

Riots in Peshawar last week left two people dead and Western businesses in flames, while another three people died in Lahore.

They are among dozens of people killed during protests in Muslim countries against the cartoons, printed first by a Danish newspaper and later in other mainly European publications.

Analysts say Pakistan’s Islamic and opposition parties are using the cartoon issue as a stick with which to beat pro-US military leader President Pervez Musharraf, who has led a crackdown on extremism.

The protests have cooled off in recent days but the MMA has called for a nationwide strike on March 3, just ahead of an expected visit to Islamabad by US President George W Bush.