ISLAMABAD, 9 March 2007 — Police arrested a would-be suicide bomber in northwestern Pakistan yesterday. The man was wearing a suicide belt.

Police in the town of Tank said they had foiled a suicide bombing with the arrest of Wahidullah Mehsud, a cousin of fugitive militant leader Abdullah Mehsud, who had been assigned to carry out a suicide attack.

“We recovered a suicide bomber’s jacket with 30 kg of explosives, a detonator and switch,” said police officer Amir Abdullah. His target was not known.

In another incident, a gunman dressed in a woman’s burqa shot dead an activist from an extremist group, police said.

The disguised gunman opened fire from a motorcycle as Masoor Ahmed Alami, a member of the banned Sipah-e-Sahaba group, left his home in Dera Ismail Khan, a city in North West Frontier Province, said Aslam Khattak, a deputy superintendent of police in the city.

Alami died later at a hospital, Khattak said.

Witnesses said the attacker had pulled up the burqa — an all-covering veil worn by many women in parts of Pakistan and neighboring Afghanistan — and fired the deadly shots as he rode pillion behind another man driving the motorcycle, Khattak said.

Police were investigating whether the attack was in retaliation for the killing of a Shiite Muslim leader in Dera Ismail Khan last month.

The government banned Sipah-e-Sahaba over allegation that it was involved in the killing of members of the Shiite community.

Pakistan has been in the grip of a security scare in recent weeks after a series of bomb blasts in various parts of the country killed dozens of people.

The wave of bombings, including suicide attacks, followed a mid-January airstrike on militant compounds in the South Waziristan region on the Afghan border.

Pakistan has witnessed several suicide attacks this year, several of them apparently targeting Shiites, though the targets have also included a five-star hotel in the capital, Islamabad.

In a separate incident, Taleban suspects attacked an army camp yesterday. According to military authorities no casualties were reported but one of the army barracks was damaged.

Authorities in North Waziristan said a number of rockets were fired from nearby mountains but did not cause major damages.

This was the first attack on Pakistan Army troops after Islamabad struck a deal with Taleban militants.

A few days back 12 Uzbek nationals and some local tribesmen were killed in a gunbattle.

Musharraf Calls Ahmadinejad

President Pervez Musharraf spoke to Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad Wednesday night and expressed the hope that his recent visit to the Kingdom and talks with Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques King Abdullah will strengthen the understanding between two important neighbors and have a positive impact on the situation in the region.

Musharraf said Pakistan has always desired peace and stability in the Middle East and the Gulf region.

He assured the Iranian president that Islamabad would always have Iran’s interest close to its heart.