NWA tribals end peace deal with government
Bureau Report

PESHAWAR—Local Taliban militants in North Waziristan tribal region said Sunday they had scrapped a peace accord reached with the government last year.
A local Taliban leader Gul Bahadar announcing the end of the agreement said that timeline of the deal ends at 04:00 pm today. The Taliban leader protested new troop movements and checkposts in the tribal region.
Taliban militants in Pakistan’s restive North Waziristan tribal region have announced they were pulling out of a peace deal with the government, accusing authorities of violating the pact. North Waziristan is a hotbed of support for al-Qaeda and Taliban militants and authorities signed a peace deal with the local fighters in September in a bid to marginalise their foreign allies.
“The Taliban are forced to announce the end of the agreement,” the leadership council or shura of the militants said in a statement issued in Miranshah, the main town of North Waziristan. Under the pact, authorities agreed to stop military operations against the militants in return for their pledge that they would not send fighters across the border into Afghanistan and would not launch attacks on security forces and government officials in North Waziristan.
The shura said the security forces had launched several attacks on militants since then. The pro-Taliban militants also said the government had violated the agreement by deploying more troops in the region.
Officials were not immediately available for comment. Critics have said the North Waziristan pact created sanctuaries for the militants in the region and US and Afghan officials said cross-border attacks increased several fold after the deal. US security officials say al-Qaeda members plot violence from sanctuaries in North Waziristan and other lawless tribal regions on the Pakistani side of the border and feared a military strike could spawn new militant activity in an important US ally.
“They seem to be fairly well settled into the safe haven in the ungoverned spaces of Pakistan. We see more training. We see more money. We see more communications,” John Kringen, the CIA’s director of intelligence, told the US House of Representatives Armed Services Committee on Wednesday.

The deal hasn't worked, says US

WASHINGTON—The US administration Sunday lent its “full support” to Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf after pro-Taliban militants scrapped a controversial peace accord with his government. National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley said last year’s deal between Musharraf and tribal militants in a Pakistani border region with Afghanistan “hasn’t worked” in dealing with Taliban and Al-Qaeda extremists. “President Musharraf understands it. We understand it. President Musharraf is taking steps to move troops back into that region. That probably accounts for the statements we heard from the Taliban,” he said in an interview. “It is concerning. There is pooling of Taliban there. There is training,” Hadley said, adding that Musharraf’s action against the militants in the lawless border belt “has at this point not been adequate.”