ISLAMABAD, April 4: The government has decided to avoid using force against the administration and students of Madressah Hafsa and try to resolve through dialogue the issue of illegal occupation of a children’s library and threats given to video/CD vendors by its students.

“In order to avoid possible collateral damage, we will prefer to go for negotiations instead of conducting an operation against Madressah students,” Interior Minister Aftab Ahmed Khan Sherpao said on Wednesday after inaugurating an ambulance and rescue service in Islamabad at the Capital Hospital.

The minister told reporters that Shariah courts could not be set up at the behest of the administration of the Madressah and the Lal Masjid.

“The government is showing immense patience over the activities of over 3,000 female students of the seminary,” the minister said. He said that Ulema of the country supported the government’s stance on the issue and termed the steps taken by students of the seminary ‘un-Islamic’ and against the laws of the country.

The minister said that cases had been registered against Madressah students and its administrator for abducting security personnel and three women and threatening CD shop owners. “We will try our best to resolve the issue through dialogue and if negotiations fail, action will be taken against them according to the law,” he added.

The students have been occupying the children’s library located next to the Madressah since Jan 21 in protest against demolition by the local administration of some mosques said to have been built on illegally-acquired land.

Now, Lal Masjid, which houses Madressah Hafsa, has become a centre of hard-line Ulema for promoting their agenda which they called ‘Islamic laws’. First they occupied the library, then they took hostage two security officials and three women, and recently they issued threats to video/CD shops owners, asking them to wind up their shops or switch over to ‘decent’ business. In order to ‘resist’ any operation by the police, the entire Lal Masjid complex is being ‘guarded’ by male and female students. One can see male students of the seminary standing on the walls and at the four corners of the complex and many of them patrolling around it while brandishing sticks.

SECURITY MEETING: Secretary Interior Syed Kamal Shah presided over a security meeting which decided to ‘restrain’ from taking any action against Madressah students, a senior security official said.

However, the meeting decided to provide full security to the owners of audio and video shops.

The official said it was decided in the meeting that police would take action against the students if they went again to the market and threatened the traders.