Pakistan agrees on 17 steps to Sharia Law in SWAT....

An update from Pakistan...

Reporting from Lahore, Pakistan -- In an apparent expansion of Islamic fundamentalists' authority in the picturesque Swat Valley, local Pakistani officials have agreed to close shops at prayer times and crack down on prostitution and drug dealing as part of a proposed peace deal, according to media reports today.

The steps were among 17 points that emerged following a Wednesday meeting involving provincial government officials and supporters of a pro-Taliban cleric mediating the talks, according to the Associated Press.

Although Sharia, or Islamic law, has been in practice in many parts of Pakistan's North-West Frontier Province and its tribal areas, its official expansion into a region less than 100 miles from Islamabad, the capital, last month has unnerved secular groups, human-rights activists and Western officials.

In a separate development underscoring the debate in Pakistan over religious extremism, a bomb exploded today at the mausoleum of a 17th century Sufi poet in the northwestern city of Peshawar after its management received a letter complaining that women were coming to pray there.

The predawn blast damaged a corner of the monument commemorating Sufi poet Rehman Baba, but no one was injured. The bomb appeared aimed at practitioners of the mystical Sufi form of Islam opposed by more hard-line Muslims

Other steps reportedly agreed to in the Swat Valley on Wednesday include banning "obscene" films, taking "stern action" against drug dealers and cracking down on corruption.