Pro-Taliban militants extend truce on Afghan border

Pro-Taliban militants have extended a cease-fire with Pakistani forces for two weeks in a restive tribal region on the Afghan border, officials said on Saturday.
The militants announced a month-long cease-fire in June to allow tribal elders to try to end the conflict in North Waziristan, where hundreds of people have been killed in battles between security forces and militants over the past year.
The truce was extended for another month in late July. "The cease-fire has been extended once again to give more time to tribal elders to broker a peace," said a provincial government official in NWFP. He declined to be identified.
The tribal elders held a jirga, or traditional council, on Friday at which the militants announced the two-week extension.
As part of the deal, 10 militants were released from prison, said another official, Muhammad Iqbal, an Assistant Administrator of Miranshah, the main town in North Waziristan region.
The militants are described as Pakistani Taliban after the hard-line Afghan militia that is battling foreign troops and government forces across the border in Afghanistan.
The fiercely independent Pashtun tribes that inhabit both sides of the porous border have never been brought fully under the control of any government. The militants promised to remain peaceful inside Pakistan.
FREE MOVEMENT The militants but demanding free movement into Afghanistan to support the mostly Pashtun Taliban in their jihad, or Muslim holy war there. They are also demanding that Pakistani forces remain confined to barracks in Waziristan, the provincial official said.
President Pervez Musharraf has said that no groups can use Pakistani territory as a springboard to launch attacks on other countries.
Pakistan, as part of its efforts in the US-led war on terrorism, has been trying to extend government authority into the rugged and largely lawless tribal lands.
Pakistan has also been trying to clear out foreign Islamist fighters who fled from Afghanistan into Pakistan after US-led forces ousted the Taliban in late 2001.
Afghanistan and its Western allies say a resurgent Taliban is benefiting from sanctuaries on the Pakistani side of the border.
Pakistan has some 80,000 troops on the Afghan border, most in North and South Waziristan. Hundreds have been killed in fighting.
Osama bin Laden is believed to be hiding out somewhere along the Afghan-Pakistani border but many security analysts doubt he is in Waziristan, given the security forces' focus on the area.