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Authorities reached an agreement on Saturday with tribal elders near the Afghan border aimed at rooting out foreign militants and ending insurgent raids into Afghanistan, a political official said.
The agreement with a tribe in the Bajaur region is the latest that authorities have struck in the hope of ending violence in its tribal belt along the Afghan border. Critics said two earlier agreements in the Waziristan region, to the south of Bajaur, amounted to giving the militants free rein, and US officials say the pacts have not stopped cross-border raids on foreign and Afghan government troops.
The deal was struck in the same district where a US air strike killed 18 people in January last year. US officials later said the strike targeted al Qaeda's second-in-command, Ayman al-Zawahri but he escaped.
A senior political official in the region, Jameel Khan, said negotiations with the tribesmen in Bajaur's Mamound border district had been going on for several months. "Tribesmen led by elder Malik Abdul Aziz assured they would not shelter any foreign militants and would also not allow them to illegally cross the border," Khan told Reuters.
Khan said the agreement with about 350 members of the Tarkani tribe was a verbal one reached with the political authorities. Bajaur is a remote, mountainous region, opposite the eastern Afghan province of Kunar, where US troops have been battling insurgents and hunting their leaders.
Many al Qaeda and Taliban members fled to the Pakistan's semi-autonomous border lands and were given shelter by the conservative Pashtun tribes after US-led forces ousted the Taliban in 2001. Pakistan has been trying to clear out the foreign militants and subdue their Pakistani allies and hundreds of people have been killed in clashes over recent years.

Copyright Reuters, 2007

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