ISLAMABAD, PAKISTAN — President Pervez Musharraf, in his first public comments since troops stormed a radical mosque in the heart of the capital, on Thursday defended the government's decision to use force and vowed to fight Islamic extremists "in every corner" of Pakistan.
Hours before Musharraf's nationally televised address, the mosque's leader, Abdul Aziz, offered a fiery funeral oration for his brother, a fellow cleric who was killed along with dozens of others in the two-day assault this week on the Lal Masjid, or Red Mosque, by elite commandos.
"God willing, Pakistan will soon have an Islamic revolution," said Aziz, who was escorted by police commandos to the funeral of his brother, Abdul Rashid Ghazi, in the family's ancestral village of Basti Abdullah in Punjab province.
"The blood of martyrs will bear fruit," declared Aziz, who was held days before the assault while trying to flee the mosque dressed in a \o7burka\f7, a head-to-toe covering worn by women.
The mosque raid and its aftermath have highlighted how deeply divided Pakistanis remain over the role of radical Islam in their society. People generally favored the mosque assault, launched after many calls for those inside to surrender, but at the same time, the Islamists' conservative views on many political and cultural issues are shared by a significant portion of the population.
In his address, however, Musharraf, who is also the military chief, denounced the Red Mosque leaders, saying they went against Islamic teachings.
"What do we as a nation want?" the president asked. "What kind of Islam do these people represent?"
"Terror and extremism have not ended in Pakistan," he said. "But it is our resolve to eliminate them.... Extremism and terrorism will be defeated in every corner of the country."
Pakistan was on high alert as Islamic militants vowed to exact vengeance for the mosque raid. In the latest of a string of deadly attacks in the region along the Afghan border, a suicide bomber Thursday killed two government officials in North Waziristan and a suicide car bomber killed three policemen in another tribal area.
In Islamabad, Pakistani officials took journalists on a tour of the ruined 2-acre mosque complex, providing a close look at the aftermath of more than 36 hours of fierce room-to-room combat that ended Wednesday. Walls were blackened and bullet-pocked; heaps of rubble still smoldered, and the ground was littered with spent ammunition and shattered glass.
