Pak leaders unimpressed with al-Qaeda appeals to oust Musharraf

The Islamic republic's largest Muslim party, Jamaat-i-Islami (JI), which campaigns fervently against Musharraf's unelected presidency and sweeping powers, dismissed the calls attributed to Ayman al-Zawahri as violent.

"We do not subscribe to Zawahiri's or anyone else's views," JI senator Khurshid Ahmed told AFP.

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"We have strong differences with Musharraf's policies and are democratically trying to influence him to bring a change.

"We have our own strategy of Islamic restructuring and it is through power of the ballot and a democratic struggle," he said.

Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam party leader Fazlur Rehman -- once openly supportive of the hardline Islamic Taliban regime that was ousted from neighbouring Afghanistan in late 2001 -- also rejected the calls.

"We don't need guidelines from al-Zawahri or any other leaders from outside," he said.

The calls were made in tapes broadcast by Arab TV channels Al-Arabiya and Al-Jazeera in which the speaker, purportedly al-Zawahri, called Musharraf a "traitor" for helping US-led forces topple the Taliban, considering sending troops to Iraq and considering recognising of Israel.

"Muslims in Pakistan must unite and cooperate to topple this traitor and install a sincere leadership that would defend Islam and Muslims," the speaker said.

The calls echoed statements on another audiotape attributed to al-Zawahiri by Al-Jazeera on the eve of the second anniversary of 9/11.

Pakistan's radical Jamaat-ud-Dawa organisation, the political wing of the outlawed Lashkar-e-Taiba militants fighting Indian rule in Kashmir, said the voice on the tape had to be proven.

"It is not suitable to comment unless the authenticity of the audiotape is verified," spokesman Yahya Mujahid told AFP.

An association representing the Islamic republic's 10,000 religious schools, from where many Taliban recruits were drawn, said the broadcast statement reflected the feelings of hardline Muslims.

"I can only say it's a feeling of Mujahedin (fighters), whether they are in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iraq or any other country," Mufti Mohammad Jamil, head of the Board of Islamic Schools, told AFP.

"The mujahedin hold Musharraf responsible for the fall of an Islamic government in Afghanistan, and that too in order to please an infidel power, the United States."