LAHORE, Pakistan – Pakistan’s promise to rein in terrorist elements after the London suicide bombings has been damaged by the reintroduction of Taliban-style “public morality” rules as violence in border regions continues.

Although President Musharraf has ordered the law, imposed by provincial officials, to be challenged in the supreme court, it is being seen as evidence of the widespread support for extreme Islamic views across the country.

The security agencies said yesterday that they were continuing to support the investigation into the London bombers, three of whom are believed to have visited Pakistan in the year before the attacks.

They were questioning a businessman whose number appeared on the telephone records of one of the four.

Sources in Lahore reported that investigators were speaking to anyone who had come into contact with the Aldgate bomber, Shehzad Tanweer, during his visit to Pakistan. But they had not achieved a significant breakthrough.

Tanweer, 22, is said to have visited several madrassas, the Islamic schools that have been the intellectual launching pads for jihad, first against the Soviets in Afghanistan and later in Kashmir, Chechnya, Iraq and, if investigators’ first suspicions are proven, now London, too.

The morality law introduced in the North West Frontier Province will force all citizens to observe the call to prayer, singing and dancing will be banned, and unrelated men and women will be forbidden from walking together in public.

The Hisban – or accountability – Law will be enforced by an Islamic committee similar to that of the infamous Department of Vice and Virtue that enforced rigid Islamic law for the Taliban in Afghanistan.

Since the London attacks, General Musharraf has made several public promises to crack down on militants who preach hatred and violence against the West.

However, analysts say that such pronouncements, while soothing to Western ears, have had little visible success since September 11, 2001.

More than 40 people, including women and children, were killed over the weekend during gun battles between Pakistani troops and Al Qaeda sympathizers along the border with Afghanistan, where resurgent Taliban and tribal militia have been harrying American forces for weeks.

The scale of the task facing Pakistan is most obvious in a favored hiding ground for Al Qaeda, Waziristan, where an 18-month campaign involving 65,000 troops has failed to pacify the region.