By Sajjad Tarakzai

Political leaders called Monday for a landmark national conference to develop a strategy to counter the militant threat following the latest carnage targeting a place of worship.

The country of 170 million is on the frontline of the US war against Al-Qaeda and the Pakistani military are bogged down fighting homegrown Taliban in its northwestern mountains.

Hugging the border with Afghanistan, where 140,000 US-led foreign troops are trying to end a nearly nine-year war, bomb attacks causing mass casualties and insurgency in northwest Pakistan have fanned fears about regional stability.

"We would like to convene a national conference to formulate a national policy on terrorism," Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani told government officials after a twin suicide attack killed 43 people at a shrine in Lahore.

In a rarity for the fractious world of Pakistani politics, the government said all major parties would be invited to the conference to find ways to eradicate terror and curb the problems of militancy.

"We will assemble all the political leadership and will take their advice," Information Minister Qamar Uzman Kaira told a news conference.

A Taliban and Al-Qaeda-linked bombing spree across Pakistan has killed more than 3,400 people in three years since government troops besieged a radical mosque in the capital Islamabad in July 2007.

Gilani said that after being "hit hard" in northwest Pakistan, "terrorists are on the run and seeking refuge in the urban areas of the country," where they are "attacking soft targets and spreading sectarian hatred".

Last Thursday's attack was the latest violence in Lahore, Pakistan's most liberal city and the capital of its largest and most populous region Punjab.

In May, gunmen wearing suicide vests also stormed mosques belonging to the minority Ahmadi community in Lahore, killing at least 82 people.

Interior Minister Rehman Malik said Punjab-based sectarian militant groups Lashkar-i-Jhangvi and Sipah-e-Sahaba were colluding with Taliban and Al-Qaeda to recruit footsoldiers across the country.

Young men were sent to training camps in the tribal belt, which lies outside direct government control, and dispatched as bombers and militant cells back to Punjab and other cities, he said.

"All the tools of federalgovernment and provincial governments are working. We are working together for the sake of the country and to fight against terrorists," Malik told reporters.

While the government announced no date for the conference, government and opposition party officials indicated it would be next week or the week after.

The military announced that a wanted Taliban commander with a 234,000-dollar price on his head had been killed in a shootout in North Waziristan, where commanders feel under US pressure to launch an operation against Islamists.

Ameerullah Mehsud was described as one of the top commanders in the Pakistani Taliban, who went by the alias of Qari Gud, which means "the man who limps", and Mazloomyar, which means "friend of the oppressed".

He was wanted for attacking security forces, kidnapping for ransom and as the Pakistani Taliban commander for Makeen and Razmak, a Taliban stronghold in South Waziristan about 430 kilometres (270 miles) southwest of the capital.

Pakistan fought a bloody campaign to push the militant group out of their South Waziristan headquarters late last year. Many militants are believed to have escaped to North Waziristan and other parts of the lawless tribal belt.

Officials said that four suicide attackers armed with car bombs and rockets targeted a fort in the northwestern district of Lower Dir overnight, killing a soldier and wounding at least seven in the town of Timargarah.

Lower Dir is around 80 kilometres (50 miles) northwest of the Swat valley. Pakistan waged a major offensive against the Taliban in both districts last year but now says the region is back under army control.

For two years, radical cleric Maulana Fazlullah led thousands of followers in an uprising that paralysed much of Swat, promoting a repressive brand of Islamic law, opposing secular girls' education and beheading opponents.

In Lahore, police chief Aslam Tareen said that six suspects have been arrested and confessed to committing attacks in Lahore, Karachi and Rawalpindi.

He said: "They are involved in the recent attacks on two Ahmadi mosques and Jinnah hospital in Lahore, attacks on a Shiite mourning procession in Karachi and on a military mosque in Rawalpindi town last year.

"The police also seized 18,000 kilograms of explosive material, six and other weapons including Kalashnikov rifles, 21 hand grenades and an anti-aircraft gun from their custody," he added.