He told a press conference that the government has arrested people who disclosed they trained at a particular camp inside the Taliban-controlled part of Afghanistan. ``We have asked the Taliban government to close down the camp and stop training people,'' he said. The United States has charged the Taliban sheltered terrorist camps that produced the bombers of US embassies in Africa last year. ``We have made it clear to the Taliban that this is not acceptable to Pakistan,'' Sharif said.

In the last one week Pakistan has been battered by relentless sectarian bloodletting. More than 30 people have been killed, most of them Shia Muslims. Their mosques have been attacked, their leaders gunned down and prominent Shiite Muslims assassinated in several separateincidents throughout Pakistan. The killing began last Tuesday and the worst single day of violence occurred last Friday when 18 people were killed in several incidents in Pakistan.

Among the incidents was an attack on a Shia Muslim mosque in southern Karachi. Nine worshippers were killed as they knelt in prayer.

Pakistan's allegations against the Taliban are considered the most serious to date, given that Pakistan has been one of the biggest supporters of the Taliban religious army and one of only three countries to recognize their government.

But according to the Taliban spokesman, Abdul Hai Muttmain, there are no training camps in Afghanistan. ``There are no training camps of Pakistanis in Afghanistan...nobody has been allowed to come into Afghanistan to conduct any terrorist activity,'' Muttmain told reporters.

Sharif, however, disagreed. He told reporters in Islamabad that his government had `solid' evidence that the sectarian killers received training in Afghanistan. Based on that evidence Sharifsent the ISI chief Zia Uddin to southern Kandahar last Monday demanding the camps be closed. ``We have told Mullah Omar that these training camps should be immediately closed because the terrorists are getting their training in those camps,'' he said. ``Our information is based on solid evidence," Sharif said.

The United States has repeatedly accused the Taliban of allowing Islamic terrorists, and in particular suspected terrorist Osama bin Laden, to operate camps in Afghanistan. Washington recently declared bin Laden's Al Qaida group a terrorist organization and last year fired dozens of Tomahawk cruise missiles at suspected camps in Afghanistan's eastern Khost region.