Pact with Pakistani Taliban bearing fruit - governor

PESHAWAR, Pakistan, Feb 23 (Reuters) Families of foreign fighters have begun leaving Pakistan's Waziristan region as a result of a controversial deal between the government and Taliban militants last year, a senior Pakistani official said today.

Ali Mohammad Jan Orakzai, governor of Pakistan's North West Frontier Province (NWFP) bordering Afghanistan, said up to 50 families of foreign nationals had left Waziristan since the peace deal was signed in September.

''The positive results of the Waziristan accord are now coming to fore,'' Orakzai, a former army general and architect of the accord, told reporters in Peshawar, capital of NWFP.

His defence of the pact with militants comes hard on the heels of negative comments by US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, who told US lawmakers a week ago that there were problems and disappointments with the results of the plan.

Orakzai did not give nationalities of the foreigners, but a large number of Arabs, Chechens, Uzbeks and other Central Asian Islamist fighters are believed to be hiding in Pakistan's lawless tribal belt.

Many Taliban and al Qaeda militants took refuge with the deeply religious Pashtun tribes in wild, rugged Waziristan after US-led forces ousted the Taliban in Afghanistan in 2001.

Pakistani forces launched operations in late 2003 to clear out foreign militants and lost 700 men in fighting, and critics say the accord eventually signed by the government was negotiated from a position of weakness and demonstrated the military's inability to control the region.

Under the deal, the militants had agreed that all foreigners living in the region would have to leave but those unable to do so would have to abide by the peace agreement.

US commanders in Afghanistan say attacks in Afghan areas adjacent to North Waziristan have increased several fold compared with a year ago, though Pakistan contends the number has been falling since September.

Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf, a key ally in the US-led war on terrorism, has said similar agreements would be struck in other areas, as partial success was better than none.

Violence subsided in North Waziristan after the deal, but an air strike on a suspected militant base in neighbouring South Waziristan that killed up to 20 people was followed by a spate of suicide attacks across the country.

In the worst attack, 16 people were killed in a blast in the southwestern city of Quetta on February 17, and a security scare has gripped Pakistan, including the capital Islamabad.

Earlier this month, Lieutenant-General Karl Eikenberry, former commander of US forces in Afghanistan, said that ultimately force would have to be used against Taliban sanctuaries in Waziristan and elsewhere along Pakistan's 2,400 km border with Afghanistan.

''We're still left with areas right now in Waziristan, and areas inside of Pakistan, where our strong belief is that mid-level and especially senior-level command and control of the Taliban and al Qaeda is,'' Eikenberry told a House of Representative's committee hearing.

REUTERS BDP RAI2013