By Anwarullah Khan KHAR, Pakistan, March 17 (Reuters) - Pakistani authorities reached an agreement on Saturday with tribal elders near the Afghan border aimed at rooting out foreign militants and ending insurgent raids into Afghanistan, a political official said. The agreement with a tribe in the Bajaur region is the latest that Pakistani authorities have struck in the hope of ending violence in its tribal belt along the Afghan border. Critics said two earlier agreements in the Waziristan region, to the south of Bajaur, amounted to giving the militants free rein, and U.S. officials say the pacts have not stopped cross-border raids on foreign and Afghan government troops. The deal was struck in the same district where a U.S. air strike killed 18 people in January last year. U.S. officials later said the strike targeted al Qaeda's second-in-command, Ayman al-Zawahri but he escaped. A senior political official in the region, Jameel Khan, said negotiations with the tribesmen in Bajaur's Mamound border district had been going on for several months. "Tribesmen led by elder Malik Abdul Aziz assured they would not shelter any foreign militants and would also not allow them to illegally cross the border," Khan told Reuters. Khan said the agreement with about 350 members of the Tarkani tribe was a verbal one reached with the political authorities. Bajaur is a remote, mountainous region, opposite the eastern Afghan province of Kunar, where U.S. troops have been battling insurgents and hunting their leaders. Many al Qaeda and Taliban members fled to the Pakistan's semi-autonomous border lands and were given shelter by the conservative Pashtun tribes after U.S.-led forces ousted the Taliban in 2001. Pakistan has been trying to clear out the foreign militants and subdue their Pakistani allies and hundreds of people have been killed in clashes over recent years. Authorities reached a deal with elders in militant-infested South Waziristan in 2005, and a similar one was struck in North Waziristan in September. But critics, including Afghan authorities, say the deals have not stopped raids into Afghanistan, where the Taliban have been stepping up their insurgency, and they have led to so-called Talibanisation on the Pakistani side of the border. U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for South and Central Asia Richard Boucher said the strategy was not working. "The political deal in Waziristan has not stopped the militancy. Unfortunately, it has not stopped the bombings against Pakistani civilians, it hasn't stopped the cross-border activity," he told a news conference in Islamabad earlier this week. President Pervez Musharraf defends the pacts, saying they empower tribal elders and marginalise militants. About 80 suspected militants were killed in October in Pakistani air strikes on a religious school in a village about 10 km (six miles) north of Khar, Bajaur's main town. (Additional reporting by Augustine Anthony)
