The seminaries, known as madrassas, pledged on Tuesday to resist moves to expel foreign students, a year after the government said they would all be sent home as part of a drive to counter extremism and terrorism. President Musharraf decided in the wake of the July 7 bomb blasts in London that all foreigners studying at madrassas should leave by the end of 2005, as their presence was giving Pakistan a bad reputation as a breeding ground for militancy. The government later relaxed the deadline in a compromise with clerics in charge of the madrassas, but the authorities have recently turned down extensions to students' visas and threatened them with deportation. "We will not hand them over at any cost," Mohammad Hanif Jallandari, a cleric at the Ittehad-e-Tanzeemul Madaris, told a press conference. When Musharraf issued orders for foreigners studying in madrasas to go home, he said there were over 1,000 in the country. Authorities say most have left but there are still 200 in Pakistan, mostly studying in madrassas in Karachi. Jallandari said madrassas were not taking any new foreign students.