Pakistan warns Taliban against dishonouring Swat peace pact

Apr 24, 2009, 8:24 GMT

   Islamabad - Pakistani prime minister Friday warned Taliban militants that a breach of a peace deal in the north-western Swat region would force the government to act against them.

   The warning came as the United States increased pressure on the nuclear-armed country to confront the emboldened militants instead of ceding more and more territory to the insurgents.

   President Asif Ali Zardari last week approved the introduction of Islamic sharia law in nearly one-third of the North-West Frontier Province, two months after a hard-line cleric brokered a peace accord between the rebels and the regional government.

   Under the pact, the government agreed to set up Islamic courts in Malakand district, which includes Swat valley, in return for an end to the months-long insurgency in which hundreds of people were killed.

   'If, God forbid, they breach the agreement, let me assure you that we can revisit the policy,' Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani told lawmakers in the National Assembly on Friday.

   'We are not puppets,' Gilani said while asserting the government would reject any decision that was against the national interest.

   As the premier spoke in the capital Islamabad, the chief minister of the province, Amir Haider Khan Hoti, consulted political parties on how to react to advances by the Swat militants, who had refused to lay down arms.

   The Taliban fighters this week both overran Swat's neighbouring Buner district, located just 100 kilometers north-west of Islamabad, and infiltrated the adjoining district of Shangla.

   Private television channels reported that the provincial government had decided to amend the peace agreement, amid statements that 'time has come to make some hard decisions.'

   The move coincides with continuing efforts to pursue the armed groups in Buner to withdraw from the district and cease armed patrols in the mountain region to salvage the deal.

   Though reluctantly supported by the Pakistani political leaders and public, the controversial peace agreement has drawn serious criticism from aboard.

   US Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton Wednesday said Pakistan 'is basically abdicating to the Taliban and to the extremists.'

   Clinton cautioned that Pakistan posed a 'mortal threat' to world security. But Islamabad rejected Washington's views and reiterated its commitment to fight extremism and terrorism.