London: January 27, 2011. (By Simon Caldwell) An outspoken Anglican bishop has urged the President of Pakistan to prosecute Muslims who try to send innocent Christians to their deaths by falsely accusing them of blasphemy. Dr Michael Nazir-Ali, the former Bishop of Rochester and the first Asian to be made a bishop in the Church of England, made his demand in a private meeting with President Asif Ali Zardari. He told the President that he must repeal the blasphemy law that carries the death penalty for insulting Mohammed, the founder of Islam, and life imprisonment for desecrating the Koran, the Islamic sacred book. He said the law was unjust because it was often misused by some Muslims to persecute their Christian neighbours. Although the fragile situation of government of the Pakistani People's Party gave scant opportunity to abrogate the law, its worst effects, the bishop said, could be lessened by prosecuting those shown to have made false claims against innocent people. 'As far as using the law to settle personal scores, revenge and things like I think that any accusation that turns out to be false should be at least punishable in a way to prevent frivolous accusations being made in future,' Bishop Nazir-Ali said afterwards. 'The blasphemy law is a bad law that will always come back to haunt the nation one way or another and as such it needs to be repealed,' said the bishop, who was born in Karachi to convert parents. 'My Muslim friends tell me quite often that when the Prophet of Islam was insulted he forgave those who insulted him which leads us having to ask why there is such a draconian law in his name,’ he said. 'The ultimate aim has to be the repeal of a bad law but I have asked the authorities in Pakistan what can be done in the meantime to help Christians and how its misuse can be prevented. 'He has also called on the Pakistani government for a moratorium on executions pending the total abolition of capital punishment. 'That at least would solve the biggest problem, which is the death penalty,' he said. At their audience in Islamabad, Dr Nazir-Ali urged President Zardari to set up specialist investigation units and tribunals which were independent of local police forces and lower courts that tended to bow to extremist mobs demanding harsh penalties for any Christian accused. The pair met just days after Salman Taseer, the Governor of Punjab, was shot dead by a security guard after he petitioned the government to review the blasphemy law following the conviction of Asia Bibi, a Christian mother-of-five who in November became the first woman to be sentenced to hang for insulting Mohammed. Miss Bibi had argued that she was falsely accused following an argument with Muslim women who objected to a Christian sharing a drinking font. Lawyers fear she could be murdered in jail while awaiting appeal. Dr Nazir-Ali said that President Zardari was sympathetic to his intervention but accepted that it was unlikely that the government would attempt to change the law in the present 'toxic' climate. 'The present government is very embarrassed by this,' he added. 'Being a kind of secular party in power this has been wished upon them. It is not something they would have done themselves. 'The problem is what to do about it now they have inherited it. The question is: are there enough courageous politicians like Salman Taseer to stand up to the extremists?' The murder of Mr Taseer on January 4 provoked an international outcry and renewed demands from around the world for Pakistan to abolish the blasphemy laws, including a pointed rebuke from Pope Benedict XVI. The killing represented the most high-profile assassination of a Pakistani political figure since the assassination of former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto in December 2007. The blasphemy law has its origins in British colonial era legislation designed to protect the then minority Muslims from oppression by the Hindu majority of India. Since it was amended by a military regime in the 1980s dozens of Christians each year have faced ruin, imprisonment and sometimes death on the testimony of even a single accuser. In 2009 some 130 attacks, arrests, detentions and murders of Christians can be traced to the laws. Dr Nazir-Ali, 61, retired early as a diocesan bishop in 2009 to devote more time to helping persecuted Christians. He has received death threats for criticising the rise of Islamic extremism in the UK.