Some 200 lawyers rallied in this eastern Pakistani city against the US-led military action

A unanimous senate resolution, passed Wednesday, "strongly deploring" the war should have used the word "condemn," the lawyers said.

"The senate of Pakistan has deliberately avoided condemning US aggression. This is lamentable," the president of the Lahore High Court Bar Association, Hafiz Abdur Rehman Ansari, said in a speech.

"The conduct of religious and other parties in the senate for not condemning the attack on Iraq is a matter of concern for lawyers and we condemn it."

Senators from the government, opposition, secular and religious parties spent three days arguing how strong the resolution's wording should be, fundamentalist Jamaat-i-Islami party senator Khurshid Ahmed told AFP.

In a separate protest in Lahore, about 500 industrial workers rallied against the military action.

Meanwhile a ten-vehicle convoy of Islamic protestors, led by the hardline Jamaat Ahle Sunnat party, arrived in Lahore on the second day of a 1,000 kilometer (620 mile) protest journey.

Their protest "road march," began in the northern city of Rawalpindi on Thursday. They are heading to the southern port city of Karachi.

Pakistan's government, a key ally of the United States in its 18-month war on terrorism, has "deplored" the war, but also stopped short of condemning it.

Public opinion in this Islamic republic of 145 million people is strongly against the war, which is largely perceived here as an attack on the Muslim world.

SPACE.WIRE