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Jamaat-e-Islami scrubs Pak monument saying Vajpayee's visit desecrated it

Members of an orthodox religious party scrubbed the floor of a Pakistani monument with rose water saying it had been desecrated by Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee's visit, a newspaper has reported.

Dozens of activists of Jamaat-e-Islami threw buckets of rose water on the floor of the historical Minar-e-Pakistan in Lahore calling Tuesday's cleansing an 'ablution'.

The spot that was cleaned was where Vajpayee had stood during a visit to the monument last month, according to the country's largest circulated Urdu language newspaper, the Jang.

The monument was built to honour a 1940 resolution that led to the creation of Pakistan.

''The ablution of Minar-e-Pakistan was necessary because Vajpayee had stepped here,'' the newspaper quoted Liaquat Baloch, a Jamaat leader who led the washing ceremony.

Dozens of heavily armed policemen stood nearby.

Jamaat-e-Islami staged violent protests during Vajpayee's visit to Pakistan last month.

Earlier yesterday an estimated 500 women activists belonging to the orthodox group in Multan, 240 kilometres from Lahore, chanted slogans against Pakistan Prime Minister Nawaz Sharief.

Baloch accused Sharief of betraying Pakistan and the Kashmiris.

UNI

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