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LAHORE, Pakistan, Feb 20 (Reuters) - A suspected Islamist zealot opposed to women in politics shot dead a Pakistani provincial government minister at a political meeting on Tuesday, officials said.

Zil-e-Huma, social welfare minister of the Punjab government and a supporter of President Pervez Musharraf, was about to give a speech to dozens of people when the lone attacker shot her in the head.

The accused, identified as Mohammad Sarwar, was immediately arrested by police.

Punjab Law Minister Raja Basharat told Reuters the gunman had been implicated in six previous murder cases but had never been convicted because of a lack of evidence.

"He revealed during interrogation that he is against the involvement of women in politics and government affairs," Basharat said.

Basharat said the gunman was not a member of any Islamist group.

"He is basically a fanatic," he said.

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Religious parties have since filled the vacuum. Pakistan's ISI, equivalent of the CIA, is pro-Taliban since the proxy war against the Soviets. It's said that most of the Army sympathizes with the Taliban and waive these religious zealots past checkpoints into Afghanistan on a regular basis. General Musharraf is a dictator and needs to go before Pakistan can ever be democratized, and the chaos in Afghanistan helped along the road to social democracy. It's chaos, and I believe it's by design and not accidental. The goal for western imperialists is to prevent an outbreak of democracy and social justice in those countries. Warfiteering and chaos rein merrily in spite of opinion polls suggesting troop withdrawals. So our western governments will eventually withdraw troops announcing that chaos rules, and social democracy is delayed for millions of desperately poor people subsisting under a yoke of theocratic feudalism and militant Islam.