Pro-Taliban cleric arrested in Pakistan

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan - Police yesterday arrested an influential pro-Taliban cleric who had brokered a failed peace deal in northern Pakistan's troubled Swat Valley, an indication the government will no longer negotiate with militants.

Authorities accused Sufi Muhammad, father-in-law of Swat's notorious Taliban leader, Maulana Fazlullah, of encouraging violence and terrorism.

The peace deal in February imposed sharia, or Islamic law, in the valley in exchange for an end to two years of fighting. But it was widely seen as handing control of the valley, once a popular tourist destination, to the Taliban.

The deal collapsed in April when the Taliban advanced south out of Swat, triggering a military offensive and a series of retaliatory attacks by militants in the northwest and beyond. Two million people fled the region, and although hundreds of thousands have returned in the last two weeks as the military operation winds down, sporadic fighting continues.

"At this critical juncture, we cannot allow, we cannot let a person walk free, a person who has supported terrorists," Mian Iftikhar Hussein, information minister for the North West Frontier Province, said of Muhammad.

"Instead of keeping his promises by taking steps for the sake of peace, and speaking out against terrorism, he did not utter a single word against terrorists," Iftikhar said in a news conference in Peshawar.

Muhammad leads a pro-Taliban group known as the Tehrik Nifaz-e-Shariat Mohammedi, or Movement for the Enforcement of Islamic Law. He was jailed in 2002 but was freed last year after renouncing violence.

But Muhammad was not in control of armed militants in Swat, and the Taliban's ability to bounce back from the offensive will depend more on its leaders, including the cleric's son-in-law. Despite occasional rumors to the contrary, none has been captured or is known to have been killed.

The Taliban was already on the run from the army, so Muhammad's arrest was unlikely to have any significant impact on the militants, said Mahmood Shah, a former security chief in the tribal region.

"I think they are totally dispirited," he said. "I don't think this arrest will have any effect on them."

But the arrest is a further sign that the government will no longer negotiate with the Taliban, a position likely to please the United States, which is looking for signs that Pakistan is serious about cracking down on militants.

The Pakistan government has already said as much. In June, Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani had said action, not words, were needed.

"The nation wants peace and the elimination of terrorism in the country, so this is not the time for talks," he had said.

Earlier yesterday, police said they had arrested former lawmaker Shah Abdul Aziz and a suspected Taliban militant in connection with the beheading of Polish geologist Piotr Stanczak, who was kidnapped near the Afghan border in September.

The two were taken into custody a month ago, Investigator Malik Tariq Awan told the Associated Press. He said Aziz, a member of a pro-Taliban religious party elected to parliament's lower house in 2002, is believed to have plotted the abduction.

Stanczak's beheading, shown in a video that surfaced in February, was the first of a Westerner in Pakistan since the 2002 killing of Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl. The other man detained was identified only as a suspected militant named Ataullah.