A top commander of pro-Taliban Pakistani tribal militants renewed his call for a one-month ceasefire with the army yesterday after a suicide car bomber killed five soldiers near the Afghan border.
Maulvi Sadiq Noor, a top leader of the Islamic militants in North Waziristan, also denied their links with the attacker who rammed his bomb-packed car into a Pakistani army checkpoint on Monday.
"We don't know who carried out this attack, but I ask my people to respect a one-month cease-fire to give peace a chance," Noor said by telephone from an undisclosed location after presiding over a meeting of militants.
Despite Noor's remark, a roadside bomb exploded yesterday, damaging a military vehicle and wounding one Pakistani soldier near North Waziristan's main town of Miran Shah, said Ghafoor Shah, an area government official.
Security forces and tribal elders are trying to capture those responsible for the roadside bombing and suicide attack, Shah said, without giving further details.
Noor is believed to be leading hundreds of militants and sheltering al-Qaeda and Taliban fugitives in North Waziristan. He has evaded several military raids in recent years.
After indirect talks with the government, Noor over the weekend agreed to back a one-month ceasefire in the region, which has witnessed scores of military operations against foreign militants and local supporters.
Yesterday, he expressed "sorrow" over the killing of the five soldiers and asked his comrades to "strictly avoid any confrontation" with Pakistani security forces.
Pakistan is a key US ally in its war on terror and Noor's cease-fire comes on the same day that US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice was to arrive in Islamabad for talks with Pakistani President General Pervez Musharraf and other government officials.
The war on terror was expected to be one of the main issues when she met Musharraf later yesterday.
Pakistan has deployed 80,000 soldiers in the country's tribal regions bordering Afghanistan in an effort to counter local tribesmen with militant allegiances, as well as Taliban and al-Qaeda extremists.
Although militants often target Pakistani forces with bombs, guns and rockets, suicide attacks have been rare.
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