Britain backs militant reconciliation efforts

Britain backs efforts to reconcile with Islamist militants on the Afghan-Pakistani border, an area with links to terrorist attacks in Britain, a senior British minister said on Sunday.

But there will be no quick solution, either through military means or negotiation, Foreign Secretary David Miliband said in the northwestern Pakistani city of Peshawar.

"We should negotiate with those who are willing to negotiate and we should reconcile with those who are willing to reconcile," Miliband told a news conference.

A new Pakistani government, facing widespread opposition to Pakistan's alliance with the United States, has called for a reassessment of efforts against militancy and has said it will open negotiations with those responsible.

That has raised questions about Pakistan's security policy, especially with President Pervez Musharraf, a staunch U.S. ally who has directed security policy for years, but who has been weakened since his allies were defeated in a general election in February.

"Those who are willing to renounce violence, I think it's important to reconcile with them and to make sure that they find place within the political process," Miliband said.

Britain, the former colonial power in south Asia, wanted to work closely with Pakistan on security, he said.

"There is no question that across the Afghan-Pakistan border is an area that is of major interest to us...because the origin of a significant amount of terrorism that we face has links back to here," he said.

A team of four suicide bombers who killed 52 people in attacks in London in 2005 had links to Pakistan, as did a group arrested in August 2006 who authorities said were planning to blow up airliners over the Atlantic.


NO QUICK FIX

Britain supported reconciliation efforts aimed at marginalising those who use extremist means for ideological reasons from others who have been drawn into a web of violent activity, Miliband said.

"We've been strong supporters of reconciliation, both in Afghanistan and in Pakistan," he said.

Miliband met political leaders in Peshawar on Sunday as well as some victims of terrorism.

The city is the capital of North West Frontier Province, where a secular ethnic Pashtun nationalist party defeated an Islamist alliance sympathetic to the Taliban in February's elections.

"No one I met today, believes there is a quick fix. There is no quick fix through military and there's no quick fix through negotiation," he said.

"This is a long, slow process, that needs to engage the hearts of minds of hundreds of thousands of people," he said.

Britain has 7,500 troops battling a stubborn Taliban insurgency over the border in Afghanistan where there are increasing calls for talks with the militants.

Late last year Afghanistan expelled a senior U.N. official and another from the European Union, after accusing them of holding talks with the Taliban and paying cash to the group.

EU and U.N. officials insisted the pair, one British and the other Irish, were only meeting tribal elders and the whole affair was a misunderstanding.

Miliband is due to hold talks with Musharraf and Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gilani in Islamabad on Monday.