Qaeda may hit back: Gen

Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf is worried about retaliation for recent security raids on tribal groups harbouring Al Qaeda-linked militants in a remote region bordering Afghanistan. Musharraf, in an interview published in the online version of Britain’s Sunday Telegraph newspaper, said he hoped the fighting would not spread to other tribal areas. ‘‘But it can have a fallout — these people have contacts elsewhere in the country and they can retaliate in the rest of the country in the form of bomb blasts, attacks on important persons and installations — and so we have to guard against that,’’ he said.

Amid indication that he is reconsidering his pledge to quit as Army Chief by year-end, Musharraf also warned the Commonwealth not to base Pakistan’s re-entry into the grouping on ‘‘any future actions of mine’’ and asked it to leave the country alone in deciding the form of democracy it should have.

Meanwhile, North Korea’s Yonhap news agency, citing a report from the state-run Korea Institute for National Unification in Seoul, said nine Pakistani scientists maybe here to help develop the country’s uranium-based nuclear weapons programme.

In Baluchistan, suspected Islamic militants blew up an airport building and damaged several houses. Around 20 rockets were fired at the airport in Sui by unidentified assailants, the province’s Interior Secretary Abdur Rauf Khan said.