President Pervez Musharraf met Monday with leaders of six conservative Islamic parties in an effort to improve ties with groups that have strongly opposed the U.S.-led war against terrorism.
State-run television showed Musharraf greeting the leaders, who wore long dark robes and white skullcaps. He sought to assure them he was committed to keeping Pakistan an Islamic, not secular, state, according to one of the leaders, Allama Shah Ahmad Noorani.
"Pakistan was born as an Islamic state and nobody had authority to change its Islamic character," Musharraf told the clerics, according to Noorani.
Among those who met with Musharraf was Qazi Hussain Ahmad, head of Pakistan's largest fundamentalist Islamic group, Jamaat-e-Islami.