By IANS
Islamabad : The Pakistan government Wednesday adopted a tough no-talks stance towards radicals holed up in the Lal Masjid complex here, even as 800 students surrendered and the mosque's deputy chief was held while attempting to escape in a burqa.
A meeting chaired late Wednesday by President Pervez Musharraf is reported to have taken the line that the only option to be given to the students and radicals still in the mosque and the two seminaries attached to it in the heart of the national capital was to surrender.
The government's public stance, however, was clear from Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz's statement that storming the heavily fortified complex would be "the last option".
The extremist administration of the mosque has been in a standoff with the authorities for the past five months over its attempts to impose a strict, Taliban-style way of life on residents of the Pakistani capital.
Meanwhile, the mosque's khatib (preacher) and deputy chief, Maulana Abdul Aziz, was nabbed while trying to escape along with some girl students by wearing a burqa.
Aziz, who is the brother of the mosque's chief cleric, Abdur Rashid Ghazi, tried to slip past a cordon of Pakistan Rangers, the paramilitary force checking those leaving the complex, but was identified and quickly nabbed.
Islamabad's police chief confirmed his arrest saying that he had been taken away to an unknown place.
Earlier in the day, more than 800 radical Islamic students who had fortified the Lal Masjid complex surrendered to the authorities a day after clashes with police and paramilitary forces left 21 people dead and over 200 wounded.
Pakistani authorities had set a deadline for the hundreds of students in the Lal Masjid to surrender and continued to extend that deadline as more students gave themselves up, officials said.
"We are continuously extending the deadline for surrender," interior ministry spokesman Javid Cheema said.
The government had ordered students entrenched in the mosque to lay down their arms by 11 a.m. (6 a.m. GMT), but the deadline was extended several times.
"We do not want bloodshed. We want to resolve the issue peacefully," Minister of State for Information Tariq Azeem told reporters, adding that immunity had been offered to all those who surrendered.
Also on Wednesday, police charged the mosque's chief and his brother with murder and terrorism, with the government declaring they would be tried under the law of the land.
Police have registered cases of murder, attempt to murder, terrorism, firing at security personnel, damaging public property and other charges against the two brothers.
In another development, Minister of State for Religious Affairs Amir Liaquat Hussain resigned from his post and from the National Assembly, citing "personal reasons".
It was not clear whether his action was related to the Lal Masjid imbroglio. His ministry, headed by Ejaz-ul-Haq, has been directly involved in negotiations with the Lal Masjid clerics over the last few weeks.
A report from London said that Altaf Hussain, the exiled chief of the pro-government Muttahida Quami Movement (MQM), appealed for extending for "a few more hours" the deadline given to the students present in the Lal Masjid complex to surrender.
"Hundreds of parents who have reached Islamabad to take their children back are in a state of severe tension. The government can relieve them of this tension by extending the deadline," Hussain said in a statement.
Hundreds of military and paramilitary troops are standing ready to storm the mosque. The surrounding area has been cordoned off and all roads leading to Islamabad are also sealed.
During their campaign, Lal Masjid students were accused of abducting several Chinese women last month from a massage parlour for allegedly being involved in prostitution.
The students had also issued warnings to the owners of audio and video stores to stop selling "un-Islamic" goods and had ordered women not to drive.
Tuesday's clashes began when stick-wielding students seized four policemen from a checkpoint and snatched their rifles and a radio set.
Security personnel barricaded all roads around the mosque complex and took up positions on the rooftops of surrounding buildings, while armed students holed up in bunker-like structures made of sandbags.
Amid gunfire, masked students charged toward paramilitary force positions and torched two of them, forcing the troopers to retreat.
The markets and streets around the mosque turned into a battlefield when hundreds of local residents joined the students in their rebellion and threw stones at the building where the security forces were positioned.
During the clash, clerics used loudspeakers to exhort the students to defend the mosque and prepare to carry out suicide attacks.