Islamabad - Australian Foreign Minister Stephen Smith on Monday announced a four-fold increase in the numbers of Pakistani government military officers to be trained in Australia.

Speaking at the beginning of a three-day visit to Pakistan, Smith said the decision would "raise the numbers to 40 to 50 officers."

Islamabad  - Hard-line Muslim cleric Maulana Sufi Mohammad, who signed a controversial peace deal with the provincial government in Pakistan's North West Frontier Province (NWFP) on Monday, said he hated democracy and wanted supremacy of Islam over the entire world.

Islamabad  - Pakistan's former military ruler and president Pervez Musharraf on Monday condemned what he called propaganda against Pakistan's army and its prime Inter Services Intelligence (ISI), saying propaganda would harm international efforts against terrorism.

"If Pakistan's army or the ISI were weakened due to certain conspiracies, the international community would lose the war on terror," the former strong man told reporters while holding a cigar in a televised press talk and looking relaxed in his informal outfit.

New Delhi - India, the United States and Pakistan face a common threat, Richard Holbrooke, the US special representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan, said Monday after talks with Indian leaders.

Holbrooke is in the Indian capital on the last leg of a fact-finding tour to the region which earlier took him to Pakistan and Afghanistan.

"India, US and Pakistan all have a common threat now ... an enemy that poses a direct threat to our leaderships, our capitals and our people," Holbrooke told reporters after meeting with Indian Foreign Minister Pranab Mukherjee.

Peshawar, Feb. 16 : A new `sharia' law has been signed between the North West Frontier Province (NWFP) government and Tahrik-e-Nifaz Shariat Muhammadi (TNSM) in Pakistan.

"An agreement has been signed between the government of NWFP and Maulana Sufi Mohammed. All laws against sharia will be abolished and sharia will be enforced under this justice system," The News quoted NWFP Information Minister Iftikhar Hussain, as saying.

The new agreement would be covering the troubled areas of Swat Valley, and Malakand district of NWFP also.

Islamabad, Feb. 16 : The Balochistan Liberation United Front (BLUF), which claimed the responsibility of kidnapping the head of the United Nations High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR), John Solecki, has extended the deadline it had set for the authorities to meet its demands.

"We are giving more days for the government to accept our demands," The Dawn quoted a spokesman of the BLUF, Shahiq Baloch, as saying.

Earlier, the extremist group had given a deadline of 72 hours for authorities, and had threatened that they would kill the official if their demands are not met within the stipulated time.