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About 1,400 foreign students in Pakistan’s Islamic schools face deportation, officials said Saturday, after the president vowed to expel them in a bid to stop the schools from being used to spread extremism.

President Gen. Pervez Musharraf on Friday announced his controversial decision to expel all foreign students from Pakistan’s Islamic schools, or madrassas. Under immigration law, the expelled students would have to leave the country.

There are about 1,400 Muslims, most from Arab and African countries, among the roughly one million students in Pakistan’s 10,000-12,000 madrassas, an Interior Ministry official said Saturday on condition of anonymity, because he is not authorized to speak to the media.

Most of Pakistan’s madrassas are funded by private donations or religious political parties. A few are believed to also receive money from some Islamic countries such as Saudi Arabia, Iran and Libya, but the schools rarely acknowledge such foreign assistance, sometimes saying the money comes from individual donors living abroad.

On Friday, Musharraf said at a news conference that all foreign students studying at madrassas would be expelled, and that no new visas would be issued to those wishing to come to Pakistan for Islamic education.

“This process will start very soon,” Interior Minister Aftab Khan Sherpao said Saturday. He said the president had taken the measure to address concerns of countries who say their young people indulge in militancy while studying at Pakistan’s madrassas.

Musharraf’s decision drew fire from Maulana Wali Khan, a spokesman for Wafaq-ul-Madaris, a body that controls about 10,000 madrassas.

“We knew that he would take this step to appease America and other Western nations,” Khan said.

Another leader of Wafaq-ul-Madaris, Hanif Jalandhri, said only 200-300 foreign students were studying at madrassas.

“These students should be given time to complete their education,” he said.

Also Saturday, Mohammed Naeem, an administrator at Jamia Banoria - one of the main madrassas in Pakistan’s largest city, Karachi - said he had read Musharraf’s statement, but had not received any formal order.

“I think the government should not treat foreign students as criminals,” he said.

The nuclear talks enter uncharted territory

North Korea nuclear crisis talks entered uncharted territory on Saturday, with host China presenting a draft joint statement for discussion by the six parties in the longest negotiating session yet, Reuters reported.

Christopher Hill (front L), U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for East Asian and Pacific Affairs and top U.S. negotiator for the six-party talks, speaks to journalists at a hotel in Beijing July 30, 2005. [Reuters]

The main protagonists, the United States and North Korea, appear as entrenched as ever, diplomats say, with Pyongyang sticking to its demands for security guarantees and aid and Washington insisting the nuclear programmes be dismantled first.

The North had even rejected a South Korean offer of energy aid in exchange for scrapping its nuclear programmes, the JoongAng daily said, citing an official in Seoul. North Korea wants the energy aid and light-water nuclear reactors too, it said.

Still, the first round of six-way talks in more than a year has seen an unprecedented level of contact between the U.S. and North Korean sides, who have met for talks six times already this week after refusing to budge from scripted position statements in three previous rounds.

"I have the impression that the United States and North Korea have deepened their understanding of each other's positions after hours and days of bilateral discussions," a Japanese delegate said on Saturday.

"But I believe the two sides remain far apart," he said. "Our work to draft a joint document will get into full swing today."

A South Korean official said China had presented a draft joint statement for discussion. Previous rounds have failed to secure a common position.

U.S. chief negotiator Christopher Hill said on Saturday: "Seriously, we will have a lot of discussion about text to see if we can come to some agreement among the six."

"But I want to let you know it's going to take a while, this is not going to be finished today or even tomorrow because even though the text will be rather brief (it will be) rather important too."

The talks have come a long way from the early days of the administration of George W. Bush, when the president labelled North Korea part of an "axis of evil" alongside Iran and pre-war Iraq, or even from early this year when his secretary of state called Pyongyang an "outpost of tyranny".

This time the discussions involving the two Koreas, the United States, Russia, Japan and China have remained open-ended. If lacking in major concessions so far, they have featured a more thorough airing of viewpoints that the parties hope could point to possible consensus.

The nuclear standoff erupted in October 2002 when U.S. officials accused Pyongyang of pursuing a clandestine weapons programme, prompting it to expel U.N. nuclear inspectors.

North Korea announced on February 10 this year that it had nuclear weapons and demanded that the United States provide aid, security guarantees and diplomatic recognition in return for scrapping them. Washington insists the nuclear programmes be abandoned first.

In Washington, U.S. officials said negotiators at the Beijing talks had presented North Korea with data America says is evidence of a covert programme to produce highly enriched uranium (HEU). Pyongyang admits only to reprocessing plutonium.

They said the evidence was obtained from disgraced Pakistani scientist Abdul Qadeer Khan whose secret network sold nuclear technology to North Korea.

The United States is demanding that Pyongyang dismantle all its nuclear activities, including the HEU programme.

All sides are committed in principle to a nuclear-free peninsula. The crux of the disagreement is over timing, whether Pyongyang should receive the security guarantees and aid before it moves to scrap its weapons programmes.

Some diplomats suggest that whether or not a joint statement is reached at the fourth round of talks, the parties can still declare success due to the unprecedented level of contact between North Korea and the United States.