ISLAMABAD. July 6: Pakistan is getting tough with Its Taliban friends in neighbour-,n6 Afghanistan. Pakistan's interior minister said today, re-ports AP.

Pakistan's tough talk began last month when the military government in Islamabad gave the Taliban a list of 18 camps where Pakistanis were allegedly receiving military training.

Interior Minister Moinuddin Haider said Pakistan demanded that the camps all be shut down. As a result, the Taliban closed camps at Rlshkore and Kargah on the outskirts of the Afghan capital of Kabul. Halder told The Associated Press In an Interview.

But Kabul residents living near the camps said (he Pakistani trainees told them that they were being sent to Kunduz province In northern Afghanistan to Join the fight against the Taliban's northernbased enemies.

Some Taliban soldiers also said alternate camps were being constructed for Pakistanis in the mountains ringing Kabul.

Haider said relocating Pakistanis to other areas of Afghanistan was not good enough.

"We told them that we don't want any Pakistanis fighting In your country. This is your internal conflict. We think you should settle it through dialogue. but If you want to fight and it is manpower you need, then get them from among your own people." Halder said.

Pakistan is one of the Taliban's few friends in a world that is deeply critical of their harsh brand of Islamic law and apparent willingness to give refuge to Islamic militants, including suspected terrorist Osama bin Laden, a multi-millionaire Saudi exile accused by the United States of masterminding the 1998 bombings ol US embassies In Kenya and

Tanzania.

But Pakistan's military government. which seized power here last October, has become Increasingly frustrated by problems at home, which it says have befti made worse by Taliban.

The Pakistani government has tried to curb violent clashes in the country between heavily armed, rival Muslim groups, some of whose members have reportedly received training in Afghanistan.

Members of these groups move freely between (he two countries, across a porous border that allowed Pakistan to be the staging area in the 1980s for US-backed Afghan Islamic guerillas lighting the occupying oviet army.

Halder said Pakistan has had enough.

"We want these people involved in sectarian killings arrested and given back to us," he said.