BRITAIN is regarded as a safe haven by Islamic extremists because it has failed to crack down on them despite urging other countries to do so, the president of Pakistan has warned.

In an interview with The Sunday Times, General Pervez Musharraf suggested that Britain had paid a price for putting the right of free speech before the need to curb militant Islamic organisations that openly advocate violence.

“They should have been doing what they have been demanding of us to do — to ban extremist groups like they asked us to do here in Pakistan and which I have done,” he said.

In particular, he said, Britain should have banned Al-Muhajiroun and Hizb ut-Tahrir, groups that he accuses of preaching anger and hatred and of calling for his own assassination.

“They could have banned these two groups. Good action is when you foresee the future and pre-empt and act beforehand, instead of reacting as in the case of Britain — which waited for the damage to be done and is now reacting to it.”

Musharraf, an ally of Tony Blair in the war on terror, took “strong exception” to accusations levelled against Pakistan since it emerged that at least two of the July 7 bombers had visited the country for several weeks up to February this year.

One of them, Shehzad Tanweer, from the Leeds suburb of Beeston, is said by relatives in Pakistan to have spent time there with militants from the banned extremist Jaish-e-Mohammed organisation. Blair has intensified pressure on Musharraf to clamp down on militant training camps and radical madrasahs or religious schools. Musharraf announced last week that all 1,400 foreign students at Islamic schools in Pakistan would be made to leave.

Musharraf said that while he had already implemented sweeping measures, much remained to be done in Britain.

“Many people around the world find it convenient to leave their countries and go to Britain, which they regard as a safe haven as it wants to project itself as a champion of human rights,” Musharraf said.

“But now they (Britain) have to reconsider and take action against these groups.”

Condemning the London bombers as “people who needed to be eliminated”, Musharraf bristled at suggestions that the outrage may have been masterminded from Pakistan because three of the bombers were British nationals of Pakistani parentage. “They came on their British passports — what do you expect us to do? Prevent British passport holders from entering? “The British government should look at those it has given passports to and we should look at those entering our country.”

Intelligence services were still trying to verify whether one of the bombers had attended a madrasah in Pakistan: “If he has gone to a madrasah we will take action against that madrasah.”

He revealed that Pakistani investigators were using telephone records provided by London to interview everyone who two of the bombers had called there from Britain. “We are going through each of those numbers,” he said. “It is a little premature to draw conclusions. It is a very tedious job.”

Musharraf has renewed calls to resolve the Palestinian and Kashmiri disputes which he regards as being at the root of terrorism affecting the entire world. “If we don’t do this we will fail the region and the world,” he said.

Pakistani security forces have detained hundreds of suspected militants and Islamist clerics since the London bombings. “Our campaign is not meant to capture large numbers of people and then release them after a fortnight,” he said. “We are not going to impress with numbers, but we are after the bigwigs, who abet extremism and violence.”

Efforts were under way to arrest Masoud Azhar, leader of the Jaish-e-Mohammed group which Tanweer is believed to have contacted.

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