Pak on tinderbox poised to explode: Zardari

WASHINGTON: Blaming therecent political assassinations on religious fanatics, Pakistan President Asif Ali Zardari today warned that fanaticism in his nation was a "tinderbox" poised to explode across the country and asked Washington to avoid confrontation and work together with Islamabad against terror.

"The religious fanaticism behind our assassinations is a tinderbox poised to explode across Pakistan. The embers are fanned by the opportunism of those who seek advantages in domestic politics by violently polarizing society," Zardari said in an oped in the 'Washington Post'.

But he declared that his government will not retreat nor will it be intimidated and will give a determined and calibrated response to terrorists.

Charging that assassinations of Punjab Governor Salman Taseer and another PPP leader Minority Affairs minister Shahbaz Bhatti was carried out by the "same elements" who killed his wife Benazir Bhutto, Zardari quoted her words to say that the fight in his country was due to internal tensions within the Muslim society, which was threatening to degenerate into a clash between Islam and the West.

He said the small but increasingly belligerent minority was intent on undoing the very principles of tolerance upon which his nation was founded in 1947 and for which principles by Pakistan's founder Mohammad Ali Jinnah, lived and died.

"The extremists who murdered my wife and friends are the same who blew up the Marriott Hotel in Islamabad and who have blown up girls' schools in the Swat Valley," he said.