Islamists lead protests against US drone strikes in Pakistan

PESHAWAR, Pakistan - Activists from right-wing religious parties led protests in Pakistan on Friday to denounce a US drone strike that killed the leader of the country's Taleban, after the movement named a notorious hardliner as his successor.

Pakistan last week reacted angrily to the drone attack that killed Tehreek-e-Taleban Pakistan (TTP) chief Hakimullah Mehsud in the North Waziristan tribal area.

The government said it destroyed efforts to begin talks to end the TTP's bloody six-year insurgency that has left thousands of soldiers, police and civilians dead.

The Interior Minister accused Washington of sabotaging peace efforts ,and former cricketer Imran Khan, head of the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaaf (PTI) party, called for a blockade of Nato convoys to Afghanistan.

Around 1,200 supporters of the Jamaat-i-Islami (JI) religious party staged a protest sit-in on Friday, blocking a Nato supply route in the north-western city of Peshawar, police and an AFP reporter said.

Mr Mohammad Ismail, a senior police officer in Peshawar said the road would reopen soon.

"It is temporary due to the protest rally, supplies will reopen on Saturday," he told AFP.

Pakistan is a key transit route for the US-led mission in landlocked Afghanistan, particularly as Nato forces withdraw by the end of next year. Many of the trucks now are actually removing Nato equipment after 12 years of war.

"Block Nato supply, stop drone attack," read one banner at the rally.

Protesters carrying placards and party flags were shouting anti-US slogans, an AFP reporter said.

In Pakistan's cultural capital Lahore, more than 200 activists of Jamaat-ud-Dawa (JuD), blacklisted as a terror organisation by the United Nations and United States, gathered outside the press club and chanted slogans against the US.

JuD also held a small rally in Karachi.

"America does not want a peaceful Pakistan, it is against peace talks, government should shoot down US drones," Shabeer Ahmad Khan, a JI leader, told the gathering in Peshawar.

Khan has set a Nov 20 deadline for the halting of drone strikes and threatened to block Nato convoys in north-western Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, where PTI leads the coalition government.

But it is not clear how he would carry out such a blockade as authority over highways lies with the federal government.

Islamabad condemns drone strikes as a violation of sovereignty, and Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif urged President Barack Obama to end them during White House talks last week.

But analysts say Mr Sharif's ability to issue demands to Washington are constrained by the fact the US last month agreed to release around US$1.6 billion ($2 billion) in aid.

In addition, Pakistan has just embarked on a new US$6.7 billion International Monetary Fund (IMF) loan package with support from Washington.

Mehsud's death last Friday was the third major blow struck against the TTP by the US this year, following the killing of No. 2 Waliur Rehman in a drone strike in May and the capture of another senior lieutenant in Afghanistan last month.

On Thursday, the TTP named its new leader as hardline cleric Maulana Fazlullah, known for leading the Taleban's bloody two-year rule in Swat Valley and for links to the shooting of schoolgirl activist Malala Yousafzai.