Pakistan Calls on Pro-Taliban Cleric to Honor Swat Peace Accord

Pakistan called on a pro-Taliban cleric to honor a peace accord in the Swat Valley where Islamic law has been introduced, as militants entered a neighboring district and challenged local authorities.
Sufi Muhammad must guarantee peace and avoid making fresh demands of the government, Information Minister Qamar Zaman Kaira told reporters yesterday, the state-controlled Associated Press of Pakistan reported.
Muhammad helped negotiate the peace agreement that saw Islamic law introduced in seven districts of North West Frontier Province, after almost two years of fighting in the Swat Valley, a former tourist resort northwest of Islamabad.
Instead of laying down their arms, some Taliban militants have captured houses in Buner district, where they are patrolling the streets and preventing the government from functioning, Sardar Hussain Babak, a provincial minister, said by telephone from Peshawar yesterday.
The drive into Buner brings the Taliban to within about 110 kilometers (70 miles) of Islamabad, their closest approach to the capital with organized ground forces in the five years since they began fighting the government.
“We will not allow the militants to challenge the writ of the government,” Babak said.
Justice System
President Asif Ali Zardari approved the so-called Nizam-i- Adal, or Justice System, last week to introduce Islamic law in the so-called Provincially Administered Tribal Areas, which includes the districts of Swat, Buner, Chitral, Shangla, Upper Dir, Lower Dir and Malakand. Together they make up 40 percent of the land area of North West Frontier Province bordering Afghanistan.
Under the regulation, conventional courts were to be replaced by a Shariah system of justice from April 14, the day the law was approved.
Muhammad is threatening fresh protests unless the government appoints Islamic judges by tomorrow. The government has said assigning judges takes time.
Richard Holbrooke, the U.S. special envoy to Pakistan and Afghanistan, has said he is troubled by the peace accord in the area, where militants have burned schools, banned education for girls and beheaded government officials.
Militant leader Maulana Fazlullah, who is Muhammad`s son- in-law and is based in Swat, has refused to surrender weapons under the accord.
President Barack Obama is pressing Zardari`s government to crack down on extremists and last month said a $7.5 billion aid package over five years proposed by Congress should be conditional on cooperation in fighting extremism.
Pakistan says it is trying to counter militants through the selective use of military force and political and economic programs in the tribal region bordering Afghanistan.
Terrorism has cost Pakistan $35 billion in economic losses and damage to infrastructure, the government said in a statement last week. More than 3,500 terrorist incidents have taken place in Pakistan since 2007 and attacks have killed an average of 84 people a month this year.