Pakistan will expel around 300 foreign students from Islamic seminaries in the country if they failed to get permission from their governments to stay, a senior official said on Tuesday.
Syed Kamal Shah, permanent secretary at the Interior Ministry, said 600 to 700 foreign students were currently enrolled with seminaries or madrasas across the country. "Fifty percent of them have already got permissions from their governments," he told a news conference. "We will expel (the remaining) if their governments don't give them No Objection Certificates (NOC) for their stay," he said.
Shah did not specify the countries involved, but officials earlier have said students in the madrasas belonged to Southeast Asia, Europe, North America and Africa.
Musharraf had announced expulsion of all foreign religious students from the country by the end of 2005, as their presence was giving Pakistan a bad reputation as a breeding ground for militancy.
When Musharraf issued those orders, he said there were over 1,000 in the country. Officials say many students had since left Pakistan.
The government later relaxed the orders in a compromise with clerics in charge of the madrasas, but the authorities have recently turned down extensions to students' visas and threatened them with deportation.
Last month, Islamic seminaries pledged to resist moves to expel foreign students.
Pakistan has about 12,000 madrasas, which provide education, shelter and food to boys from poor families. But a few are suspected of teaching militancy.
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