KHATTAK, Pakistan, UPI International, 25 Sept - Pakistan's most powerful tribal leader, Ajmal Khattak, yesterday pleaded with the country's leading fundamentalist agitator, Sami ul-Haq, "to keep Pakistan calm during the present crisis." But Mr. Khattak's entreaties were unsuccessful. Mr. ul-Haq, who serves as the co-president of Jamiat-e-Ulema-e-Islami, president of the University for the Education of Truth and chairman of the Afghan Defense Council, was not listening. His cell phone rang each time Mr. Khattak tried to make a point. At the end of a narrow, dusty, dirt alley choked with donkey carts weaving between fruit and vegetable stalls, the two leaders sat on stained white plastic chairs outside Mr. Khattak's rundown, mud-brick abode. Mr. ul-Haq kept telling his callers "not to worry because our Islamic forces are ready." Mr. Khattak would then start his pitch again, urging Mr. ul-Haq to give President Pervez Musharraf "the benefit of the doubt." But Mr. ul-Haq did not seem to be interested in what Mr. Khattak had to say. "The Israeli Mossad intelligence service organized the acts of terrorism against America to give America a pretext to launch a general offensive against the Muslim world," he said. "So we must reply." "If you believe that," replied Mr. Khattak, president of the National Alliance Party, "all the more reason not to fall into the trap and to keep your powder dry." Mr. ul-Haq once again brought his cell phone to his ear, most obscured between his top-hat-sized turban and his flowing black-dyed beard. "No, don't worry," he told the caller. "Everything is under control. You will be pleased." After Mr. ul-Haq drove off in his 4x4 Subaru, honking donkey carts off the narrow path into the space between the stalls, Mr. Khattak shook his head sadly and said, "They seem to be preparing something big." Fazlur Rehman, the other co-president of Jamiat-e-Ulema-e-Islami, yesterday was in Chaman, the border town on the road that links Quetta and Kandahar, headquarters for Taliban leader Mullah Mohammad Omar. Mr. ul-Haq told Mr. Khattak he had gone there to address Afghan refugees. When asked what he thought might defuse the immediate crisis, Mr. Khattak said, "the United States must talk to Taliban leaders with a high-level delegation." Told that it was too late for what would probably be seized upon by Omar as a pretext for more dilatory tactics, Mr. Khattak said, in a barely audible voice, "It won't take much at this stage for our extremists to light the fuse of civil war." Mr. Khattak also said that U.S. support for the Northern Alliance battling Taliban forces in the hope of taking Kabul and bringing back old king Zahir Shah, 88, "would be a tragic mistake." The alliance, he explained, "is made up of minority Tajik and Uzbek tribes who can never control the dominant Pashtuns. Before dipping its toes in Afghanistan's treacherous waters, Washington should always remember that these fierce warriors defeated two of history's mightiest empires - Great Britain and the Soviet Union." Repeated attempts to get through to Mullah Omar's office were unsuccessful. Someone kept answering the phone and saying each time, "Call back in 5 minutes." Meanwhile, journalists continue to trickle in from all over the world. An estimated 400 are scattered in small hotels from Islamabad to Rawalpindi and from Peshawar to Quetta. A total of 280 of them are at the Islamabad Marriott. Construction workers have put up plywood partitions in the ballroom to create 16 more beds - without bathrooms. They go for $100 a night. Regular rooms run $300 a night. Some 250 Afghan hotel staff have been sent home on indefinite leave under orders from Pakistani security. A U.S. delegation that arrived Saturday night has split into State Department and Defense Department teams to negotiate the modalities of the assistance pledged by Pakistan for real-time intelligence, overflight rights and logistical facilities. U.S. teams also went directly to Peshawar near the Afghan border and Quetta, the capital of Baluchistan.

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan, UPI International, 23 Sept - The key to understanding the links between radical Muslims in Pakistan and Afghanistan's ruling Taliban militia lies in Khattak, a town 28 miles from the northwestern city of Peshawar. This is where the fundamentalist University for the Education of Truth is located, and where nine out of the Taliban's top 10 leaders spent between eight and 12 years studying and reciting the Quran as it was written in classical Arabic. The university president is Sami ul-Haq, co-president of Jamiat-e-Ulema-e-Islam (Party of the Holy Men of Islam). He is widely considered the closest friend in Pakistan of Osama bin Laden, the terrorist leader believed responsible for the Sept. 11 attacks on the Pentagon and the World Trade Center. The institution's 2,500 students are drawn from all over the Muslim world, stretching from Morocco to Indonesia. Though many come from the Arab world, some 700 are from Afghanistan and 500 from the Muslim former Soviet republics. One of the Khattak facility's chief backers is Pakistan's powerful Inter Services Intelligence (ISI) agency, considered as a state within a state. Links between the two go back to the school's founding 50 years ago by Mr. ul-Haq's father. Over the years, ISI has both funded the Khattak facility and recruited agents from its graduating classes. Since 1996, when the Taliban took over Kabul, its top leaders, who graduated from Khattak, have been frequent guest lecturers, journeying freely between the two countries. Students at the school speak about bin Laden with reverence, as the Muslim world's leading hero after the Prophet Mohammed himself. The Taliban (the word means students in Arabic) movement was inspired by a former ISI chief, Gen. Hameed Gul - a fundamentalist who became virulently anti-American after the United States abandoned Afghanistan following the Soviet pullout in 1989. During the war against Soviet occupation forces, Gen. Gul worked closely with the CIA and Saudi intelligence. He spent two weeks in Afghanistan immediately prior to Sept. 11, intelligence sources say. The murky world of Pakistani links to the Taliban became apparent with efforts to mobilize anti-U.S. demonstrations in cities and small towns throughout Pakistan on Friday. Security officials told UPI they worried about the loyalties of religious leaders in towns and villages in the Northwest Frontier Province bordering Afghanistan. No sooner did frontier tribal elders pledge fealty to Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf on Thursday than the heads of the tribes held a jirga, or consultative meeting, Friday to denounce Gen. Musharraf's support for the U.S. war effort against terrorism. It is an open secret in Pakistani security circles that ISI devoted undisclosed amounts of money to help the ulema, or religious council, turn out thousands of demonstrators at Friday's pro-Taliban rallies. From Karachi to Peshawar and from Lahore to Quetta, the mullahs and muftis were assigned the task of producing from 100 to 500 demonstrators per mosque and madrassa (religious school), a security official said. The ISI objective was to demonstrate - by aiding the demonstrators - a groundswell of anti-U.S. sentiment to hundreds visiting journalists from all over the world. Though the protests produced dramatic images, with demonstrators burning U.S. flags and President Bush in effigy, the turnout was far lower than most had expected. The security official explained that, depending how well the demonstrators shouted and how effective were their banners - hastily painted in English for TV camera crews - they were to be rewarded with chicken dinners and movie outings. The security official said children were also told they would get 20 rupees (30 cents) if they showed sufficient zeal and 200 rupees ($3) for a direct hit against a police officer with a stone. By contrast, a Pakistani policeman makes 120 rupees a day.