Following the outcry over the Mukhtaran Mai gang-rape case, Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf has proposed a conference where women victims of injustice can narrate their ordeals and recommend remedial measures.

"The government would ensure that such a conference will be representative of different types of women victimisations occurring all over the world rather than single out any one country," The Dawn Thursday quoted the president as saying.

He was responding to several e-mails about Mukhtaran Mai on his official website.

Musharraf assured that the government would ensure justice to other women like Mukhtaran Mai against whom injustices had been committed by society.

On his decision to slap a travel ban on Mukhtaran Mai, he said it was in the national interest as he felt the invitation (to the US) would have "tarnished Pakistan's international image rather than help improve the lot of womenfolk in Pakistan or elsewhere in the world."

Rights groups had invited Mukhtaran Mai to the US to address some meetings about her ordeal. Mukhtaran was gang-raped in 2002 on the order of a tribal council as a reprisal for her brother's relationship with a woman of a rival clan.

"In this case I felt that Pakistan was being singled out without taking into consideration the government's efforts to assist in her ordeal," he asserted.

"It has been unfairly assumed that the government is not supportive of Mukhtaran Mai in her quest for justice. These assumptions are absolutely incorrect."

"Let me make it absolutely clear that Mukhtaran Mai is free to go wherever she pleases, meet whoever she wants and say whatever she pleases," Musharraf said.

"I have full faith in her and in her patriotism."