A pro-Taliban Pakistani commander has ordered his followers to halt attacks, after Pakistan's new government initiated peace talks.

Betullah Mehsud, who is accused of masterminding last year's assassination of Benzair Bhutto, the former prime minister, ordered the ceasefire in a leaflet, a government official said on Thursday.

"For the sake of general peace, provocative actions are strictly banned. The order is final and there will be no leniency," the leaflet said, attributing the order to Mehsud.

The leaflet warned that those who violated the order would be strung up in public.

A government official confirmed the leaflets were genuine and were issued by Mehsud's group.

"It's a confidence-building measure, part of the peace process that has begun with local militants," the Reuters news agency reported a government official as saying.

Mehsud's Tehrik-e-Taliban is an umbrella organization, formed last year, of various groups based in Pakistan's ethnic Pashtun border lands.

Peace talks

Pakistan's new coalition government, led by Bhutto's Pakistan People's Party, has started negotiations in a bid to break with the policies of Pervez Musharraf, the Pakistani president whose policies to tackle the armed groups ranged from military action to appeasement.

In recent years, Pakistani authorities have struck a number of pacts with groups in both South and North Waziristan but the deals, intended to stop attacks into Afghanistan, have so far been temporary.

But critics, including US commanders in Afghanistan, said the deals let the armed groups entrench themselves on the Pakistani side of the border and intensify their attacks across it into Afghanistan.

The new government's policy has also come under fire from the US and EU.

US concern

Washington expressed concern on Wednesday about the purported peace deal and urged Pakistan to continue to fight armed groups as part of Washington's so-called war on terror.

But Mohammad Sadiq, Pakistani foreign ministry spokesman, defended the use of negotiations with armed groups to curb a wave of suicide bombings.

"We believe that military action alone will not be effective in permanently ending the phenomenon of terrorism," Sadiq said.

Earlier, Mehsud's spokesman, Maulvi Omar, said the talks with the government were making progress.

"Talks are going well and the two sides have fulfilled their promises. We're very hopeful," Omar said.

The government had started withdrawing troops from different areas in South Waziristan and released some fighters, he said.

A military spokesman denied the army had pulled any troops out of the region but on Monday the authorities did release Sufi Mohammad, a senior Taliban leader accused of sending thousands of fighters across the border to battle US-led forces in Afghanistan.

PHOTO CAPTION 

Pakistani Taliban militants gather in the border town of Inayat Kili in March 2008.

Al-Jazeera