Tribals help Pakistan arrest 10 Taliban suspects

Miranshah (Pakistan), Sept 21: Tribal elders in Pakistan's troubled North Waziristan region helped security forces arrest 10 suspected Taliban fighters believed to have been returning from Afghanistan, officials said today.

The detentions were the first since Pakistan's government reached an agreement through tribal elders with pro-Taliban militants in the region on September 5.

The men were caught in a raid on a cluster of houses in Lowara Mandi village on the Pakistan-Afghan border yesterday after information militants had fled fighting in Afghanistan's neighbouring Paktika province.

''Ten people have been arrested. Some of them are Pakistanis and some are Afghans,'' an intelligence official told Reuters on condition of anonymity.

''They are being interrogated to know whether they were involved in fighting.'' The Dawn newspaper reported yesterday that several US helicopters had crossed into Pakistani airspace over Lowara Mandi, but officials said there was no territorial violation.

Under the pact with pro-Taliban militants, it was agreed that attacks on security forces in North Waziristan and on Afghan and Western forces across the border would stop in return for a halt to military operations in the semi-autonomous tribal region.

Pakistan shares a 2,450-km porous border with Afghanistan and Afghan officials often complain that militants use Pakistani territory as a springboard for attacks on US-led coalition and Afghan forces.

The same row broke out at the United Nations General Assembly yesterday.

Without naming Pakistan, Afghan President Hamid Karzai told assembly that foreign troops would not be able to end Taliban assaults unless ''terrorist sanctuaries'' outside the country were destroyed.

Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf rejected the charges and said Kabul should do more to stamp out the militant threat.

During a visit to Kabul this month, Musharraf promised full support in the fight against the Taliban, but maintained that the recent upsurge in violence came from within Afghanistan.

More than 2,500 people have been killed in violence in Afghanistan this year, the worst bloodshed in the country since 2001 when US-led forces overthrew the Taliban for sheltering Osama bin Laden and other al Qaeda members, responsible for the September 11 attacks on the United States.

Many al Qaeda and Taliban militants fled to Pakistan's border regions, including the rugged Waziristan region, where hundreds of people have been killed in battles between Pakistani security forces and militants over the past three years.

REUTERS