NEW YORK: UN chief Ban Ki-moon is pressing Pakistan to end capital punishment and restore a moratorium on the death penalty the government lifted in terror cases following a Taleban school massacre.

Ban spoke with Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif to express his condolences after the slaughter in the northwestern city of Peshawar.

However, “while fully recognizing the difficult circumstances, the secretary general urged the government of Pakistan to stop the executions of convicts and re-impose the moratorium on the death penalty,” Ban’s office said in a statement. Sharif promised that “all legal norms would be respected,” the statement added.

Meanwhile, a court has issued an arrest warrant for a hard-line cleric who suggested the massacre of schoolchildren was understandable, after he allegedly threatened people criticizing him.

Maulana Abdul Aziz, the pro-Taleban cleric and head of the Red Mosque in capital Islamabad has been accused of threatening civil society activists, who this week staged several demonstrations outside the mosque, a police official and a spokesman for the mosque told AFP.

Aziz effectively told worshippers the attack in Peshawar was a justifiable reaction to the army’s “un-Islamic” operation against militants in the North Waziristan tribal district.