Pakistan to prepare national anti-terror plan

Pakistan will prepare a national anti-terror plan in a week, Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif said Wednesday a day after a group of Taliban militants attacked an army school and killed 141 people including 132 children.

Sharif said senior political leaders who met in Peshawar at his invitation "resolved to continue the war against terror till elimination of the last terrorist from Pakistani soil".

He told the conference that there would be no discrimination between good and bad Taliban and the war against terror will continue with the national spirit, Xinhua reported.

He read out an unanimous resolution approved by the national political leadership at the day-long conference.

The leaders decided to form a committee under the chairmanship of Interior Minister Chaudhry Nisar Ali Khan to prepare a national plan of action against terrorism within a week.

The committee will have one representative each from parliamentary and other political parties while representatives of the armed forces and intelligence agencies will also be part of the committee.

The National Plan of Action would be presented before the national political leadership in a week for approval. It will then be placed before the nation by national political and military leadership.

"The meeting resolved that an effective national strategy should be formed and implemented to tackle the menace of terrorism," the prime minister later said at a press conference in the presence of political leaders, including representatives of opposition parties.

The leaders said that the human tragedy in Peshawar was yet another cowardly act of the fleeing terrorists and the "war against terror is our own war".

They noted that the armed forces and security institutions rendered great sacrifices and destroyed numerous hideouts and their network.

The resolution lauded the sacrifices of the armed forces during the ongoing operation against the militants in North Waziristan as a result of which the network of terrorists has been broken and their hideouts destroyed.

The influential opposition leader, Imran Khan, also attended the conference in spite of his anti-government protest. Khan has also cancelled his Pakistan's shutdown protest scheduled for Dec 18 as a show of unity against the Taliban attack.