Pakistan spy chief to brief parliament on security

By Simon Cameron-Moore

ISLAMABAD (Reuters) - Pakistan's new military spy chief was set to brief lawmakers on the internal security threat, and conflict in tribal lands seen as al Qaeda and Taliban havens, in a rare closed door session of parliament on Wednesday.

"It will help evolve a national consensus and formulate a national policy on how to tackle growing terrorism and extremism," Defence Minister Ahmed Mukhtar told Reuters.

"Everybody knows the security situation in the country," he said, as troops sealed off roads leading to parliament and government buildings, and helicopters hovered over Islamabad.

The nuclear-armed state is reeling from a fresh wave of bomb attacks after a lull that followed an election in February that brought a civilian government to power and signalled the end of the road for former army chief Pervez Musharraf's presidency.

A suicide truck bomb that killed 55 people and destroyed the Marriott Hotel in Islamabad on September 20 delivered a fresh shock to a country whose best known politician, Benazir Bhutto, was assassinated in a suicide bomb and gun attack last December.

The six-month old coalition, headed by Bhutto's party, is under pressure from its U.S. ally to use more force against the militants fuelling the insurgency in Afghanistan, and harbouring Al Qaeda planners plotting attacks in the West.

Lieutenant-General Ahmad Shujaa Pasha, who was appointed director general of the Inter-Services Intelligence last week, was briefing an in-camera joint session of the two houses of parliament before taking questions from lawmakers.

It is only the third time a joint session of parliament is being held in-camera since 1974, but the press gallery was empty.