KARACHI. July 6: Tight security was enforced in the Pakistan port of Karachi today in case of trouble from a strike by call by the main Islamic op-fiosition party, Jamaat-e-slami. against Sunday's Kashmir pullout plan, reports Reuters.

Scores of. paramilitary rangers and police backed by armoured personnel carriers manned roads and sensitive areas in Pakistan's biggest city, but organisers said the protest got off to a slow start and little disruption was reported.

Rallies and demonstrations were called for today afternoon in Karachi. Lahore and the capital. Islamabad, against a US-Pakistan agreement that Kashmir mujahideen groups and Jamaat-e-Islami branded a "betrayal" of the nation.

Jamaat-e-Islami said the strike was aimed at ending Prime Minister Nawaz Sharifs

government after he agreed with US President Bill Clinton to take "concrete steps" to end Pakistan's worst military confrontation with India over Kashmir in nearly 30 years.

Jamaat-e-Islami is the biggest and best organised of Pakistan's conservative Islamic opposition groups but has no members of parliament because it boycotted the last elections.

The call was backed by Kashmiri militant groups who termed the Sunday pact a sellout of principles Pakistan has maintained for years and a betrayal of the "freedom fighters" operating inside Indian Kashmir.

Until Sunday, Pakistan had said it had no control over the mujahideen militants, to whom it gave only political and moral and no military or strategic support.

But Foreign Minister Sartaj

Aziz said in a Monday interview that the pact meant Islamabad would use its influence to pull them out and would link the move to the internationalisation of the Kashmir dispute after the US visit.

"If the mujahideen or the freedom fighters, as we call them, are going to be persuaded to withdraw, then they obviously would do so if the world is paying some attention to their concerns and their right of self-determination," Aziz said.

"If not they would not obviously respond to our appeal ... because they say they nave a right to be in Kashmir and they are fighting for their right of self-determination, so I think this assurance of some progress on Kashmir will give greater. weight to an appeal that we may make to them to ... ." Aziz said.

Clinton said he would take a "personal interest" to try to nudge a stalled Indo-Pakistani

peace process back on track.

Puzzled Pakistani newspapers called on the government to explain what Sharif agreed to do in Kashmir in his weekend dash to Washington.

"The joint statement of Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif and President Clinton, as released by the White House, is likely to leave many in Pakistan bewildered," the Nation newspaper said.

"While our government spokesmen will, as usual, try to put all kinds of spin on this statement, the people have a right to know what the country has gained and what it has lost...." said the English-language independent daily. The News.

"Mr Sharif, after all, himself sought a meeting whose outcome. as is evident from the joint statement, is the very opposite of his owned stated objective and recent rhetoric."