Pakistan holds suspected Taleban officials

Pakistan detained 25 suspected Islamist militants for questioning about the London bomb attacks on Tuesday while Prime Minister Tony Blair urged British Muslims to help root out extremism.

The 25, the latest in a number of men detained by Pakistani authorities, were picked up overnight in Punjab province.

An official from the provincial government said they were being questioned about any links to the July 7 bombings, which killed 56 people on three underground trains and a bus.

Three of the four bombers were young British Muslims of Pakistani descent, and officials say all of them visited Pakistan last year. The fourth was a Jamaican-born Briton.

A senior security official in Punjab said he expected questioning of a handful of other militants detained in recent days would confirm ties to the London bombers.

"We suspect two or three of the detained had links with the bombers. We are interrogating them intensively. We hope we will come out with some positive outcome shortly," he said.

Blair said he had spoken to Pakistan's President Pervez Musharraf on ways to tackle militancy and its causes. Musharraf has denounced the London bombings as "unIslamic."

He also met senior imams, Muslim politicians and representatives of the Muslim Council of Britain (MCB) in London to appeal for help in tackling Islamist militancy.

"There was a strong desire from everybody there to make sure we establish the right mechanisms for people to be able to go into the community and confront this ... evil ideology, take it on and defeat it," Blair told a news conference afterwards.

British and Pakistani officials have differed over how far the men involved in the London bombings were driven by home-grown radicalism, or inspired by militant groups in Pakistan with ties to al Qaeda.

"The jury's out on where they were infected and how they were infected," Maleeha Lodhi, Pakistan's high commissioner in London, told Reuters.

"So far in the inquiries and investigations, we're at a very sensitive phase," she said. "We're looking into where they went, who they met, what they were doing."

Blair is keen to build a dialogue with Muslim communities at home and abroad but could face a tough time in Britain winning round disaffected Muslims.

Radical Muslims dismissed his meeting on Tuesday as a sham and some moderates said they were suspicious of Blair's agenda.

"The whole focus has been on trying to put the blame on Islam and the Muslim leadership," said Ahmed Versi, editor of the Muslim News, Britain's biggest selling Muslim newspaper.

At least one of the London bombers was believed to have visited an Islamic religious school in Pakistan, reigniting a debate over how far some of these schools, or madrasahs, are responsible for encouraging Islamist militancy.

Afghan President Hamid Karzai, on a visit to London, joined Blair in calling for the closure of some madrasahs.

"Some of the madrasahs are very good," Karzai said. "There are some other madrasahs ... that are training camps and those we have to close wherever they may be."

Pressure intensified on Britain's intelligence services on Tuesday with the leaking of a memo in which they said just weeks before the July 7 bombings that there was no group with the motive and means to attack.

The threat assessment report from Britain's Joint Terrorism Analysis Centre (JTAC), obtained by the New York Times, also said violence in Iraq motivated terrorist activity in Britain.

One lead in the international investigation appeared to have reached a dead end on Tuesday.

In Cairo, the Egyptian cabinet said an Egyptian biochemist being questioned in Egypt had no links with the bombings.

Last week, Egyptian authorities detained Magdy Elnashar, who has denied any role in the attacks. British police had been searching Elnashar's rented flat in the northern English city of Leeds which had been linked to the bombers.

- REUTERS