Islamabad, May 24:

Pakistan’s tourism minister withdrew her resignation after government leaders reassured her of their support in the face of condemnation from radical Islamic clerics for hugging a foreign man, a senior official said today.

Nilofar Bakhtiar was caught up in a standoff between authorities and clerics at a mosque in the capital. The clerics’ campaign to impose Islamic law has involved kidnapping policemen and setting up their own court.

The court at Islamabad’s Lal Masjid, or Red Mosque, condemned Bakhtiar last month for un-Islamic behavior after a newspaper published a photograph of her embracing her parachute instructor in France.