ISLAMABAD: Nato approves of Pakistan's peace deal with militants in a volatile tribal region and wants Islamabad's help to do the same thing in Afghanistan, Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf has said.

Musharraf said the commander of the Nato force fighting a spiralling Taliban insurgency in Afghanistan, British General David Richards, had agreed with Pakistan's strategy when he visited him earlier this week.

Richards "absolutely agrees with the environment and my analysis and he is asking for our help to do the same thing, and we will proceed on the same course," Musharraf told reporters, referring to the accord in North Waziristan.

Pakistan's allies in the US-led "war on terror" have previously expressed reservations on the controversial accord, which was signed on September 5 by the authorities and by tribal leaders and insurgents.

Under the accord, Pakistan released dozens of detained tribesmen and agreed to dismantle checkpoints in North Waziristan. The rebels pledged to end targeted killings and cross-border attacks into Afghanistan.

Ahead of his talks with Musharraf on Tuesday, Richards said that Pakistan's arrangement could set an example for the 31,000-strong Nato-led International Security Assistance Force in Afghanistan.

Nato had reached a deal of its own with tribal elders in southern Afghanistan's Helmand province that cut violence, he said, although it had not made any pact with insurgents.

Afghanistan is facing its bloodiest period since the toppling of the fundamentalist Taliban regime in 2001, with a rash of suicide bombings and attacks targeting foreign and Afghan troops and local officials.

Following a bloody summer of Nato offensives that the Western alliance says have killed more than 1,000 insurgents, officials are looking at new ways of quelling the violence enough to begin rebuilding the war-torn country.

More than 2,000 people voiced support in the eastern Afghan city of Khost on Wednesday for a government plan for talks between tribes on both sides of the Afghan-Pakistan border aimed at ending the Taliban insurgency.

Musharraf said Pakistan had had to change its own strategy after nearly five years of bloody army operations in the tribal areas, where many Al Qaeda and Taliban militants fled from Afghanistan.

Foreign Al Qaeda rebels had mostly been purged from the rugged border region but Islamabad now faced the difficulty of weeding out pro-Taliban insurgents who are all Pakistanis, he said.

Instead of more battles it was better to return to the age-old system of giving tribal elders the responsibility for reining in their people, he added.

"This strategy is worth a try, because there is no other way and if we don't do anything and if we think that the military will succeed we are sadly mistaken, we will suffer," he told journalists after a meal to break the day's fasting for Ramadan.

"This strategy I have mentioned everywhere and Alhamdolillah (praise to be Allah) everyone has accepted it. The UK and the US and their administrations have agreed this is the way forward."

He added: "I know there is so much criticism... I think nobody has a right to criticise unless he gives an alternative strategy," Musharraf added. – AFP