ISLAMABAD: The Pakistani government on Sunday released 350 workers of the Tehreek-e-Labbaik Pakistan (TLP), Interior Minister Sheikh Rashid Ahmed said, amid efforts to negotiate peace with the outlawed religious group that plans to march on Islamabad. 
Thousands of supporters of the radical party on Saturday departed the eastern Pakistan city of Lahore, clashing for a second straight day with police. On Friday, two policemen were killed in violent clashes between security forces and protesters. 
TLP has said its protest march would end in the capital Islamabad and is aimed at pressuring the government to release TLP chief Saad Rizvi, who was arrested last year amid similar demonstrations seeking the expulsion from Pakistan of the French ambassador over caricatures of the Prophet Muhammad (PBUH) published in France last year. 
On Saturday, protesters managed to exit Lahore and head toward the capital despite road blockades. They are currently camped in Muridke, a city some 55 kilometers from Lahore, and will stay there while a TLP negotiation team meets government representatives for talks. 
“We have released 350 TLP workers up to now and we are still waiting to open the both sides road of Muridke as per the decision with TLP,” Ahmed said in a Twitter post. 

Pakistan’s Religious Affairs Minister Noorul Haq Qadri said earlier on Sunday the government’s negotiations with the TLP were inching close to “success” and the demonstrators would be allowed to hold a peaceful sit-in until Tuesday. 
“Negotiations between the government and TLP are moving toward success, and the demonstrators will record their protest till Tuesday,” Qadri said in a statement after talks with a three-member TLP committee in Lahore. “The protesters will record their protest till Tuesday ... Protesters will continue peaceful protests wherever they are.” 
The government had listened to all of TLP’s demands and would consider them “seriously,” Qadri said, adding all roads in the country would be reopened by Monday and there would be no confrontation between the protesters and the police. 
“In case of peace, police and security agencies will not take any action against the sit-in,” he said. “All the issues will be resolved with mutual discussion.” 
Also on Saturday, the government summoned reinforcements from other parts of the country to Islamabad. 
A notification from the interior ministry to the Punjab and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa provinces and Azad Jammu and Kashmir asked for 10,000 policemen to be deployed in the capital from each region. 
TLP announced a march on Islamabad on Thursday. A day later, its supporters clashed with police when they tried to block demonstrators from leaving Lahore for the capital. 
TLP is protesting the incarceration of its top leader Saad Rizvi as well as the government’s refusal to expel the French ambassador over cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad (PBUH) published in France last year. 
Rizvi was arrested in Lahore in April for threatening the government with anti-France rallies. His detention was followed by violent demonstrations by TLP supporters across the country. 
The protests, which lasted over a week, saw the blockage of major roads and highways in major cities in Pakistan, and resulted in the deaths of six policemen, with over 800 people injured. Rizvi has been in custody since.