ISLAMABAD, Pakistan — Pakistan’s tourism minister withdrew her resignation after government leaders reassured her of their support in the face of condemnation from radical Islamic clerics for hugging a foreign man, a senior official said yesterday.

The court at Islamabad’s Lal Masjid, or Red Mosque, said last month that Nilofar Bakhtiar engaged in un-Islamic behavior after a newspaper published a photograph of her embracing her parachute instructor in France after making a charity jump.

Ms. Bakhtiar offered to quit the Cabinet during the three-month standoff between authorities and clerics at the mosque. She said President Musharraf ‘s government, which critics accuse of appeasing religious extremists, gave her too little public support.

However, a spokesman for the ruling Pakistan Muslim League-Quaid party confirmed reports that Prime Minister Aziz and party chairman Chaudhry Shujaat Hussain had talked her into staying.

“Both leaders managed to convince her that her complaint was not justified and therefore it would be in the party’s interest and her own interest that she resumes her work,” spokesman Tariq Azeem said.

Also yesterday, Muslim radicals freed two police officers who were abducted amid their drive to enforce a harsh interpretation of Islamic law that has raised alarm about the spread of religious extremism.

One of two brothers who run the Red Mosque, Abdul Rashid Ghazi, summoned reporters to witness the release of the two officers, who were seized May 18 by his student followers.

Standing in front of a green gate to the mosque’s downtown compound, Mr. Ghazi said the men were freed “in the spirit of Islamic brotherhood and humanity” after pleas from their relatives.

He denied the release had anything to do with the gathering threat of a police raid and said his followers could abduct more police in future.

“There is no fear of any kind,” the white-bearded cleric said.

The release eased some of the pressure building from a four-month-old confrontation between authorities and the clerics, whose male and female student followers have launched a Taliban-style moral policing campaign that has included threats to music stores and the abduction of an alleged brothel owner.

The Taliban banned music, television, and movies during their rule of neighboring Afghanistan, which was ended by a 2001 American-led invasion.