WANA, Sept 19: The government handed over a list of 200 wanted suspects to elders of the Ahmadzai Wazir tribe in South Waziristan on Sunday, officials said. The list does not contain names of foreign militants hiding in various areas of the troubled region, they said.

The administration has not set any deadline for the surrender of wanted persons, but has asked the tribe to accomplish the task as soon as possible. Regional administrator Asmatullah Khan Gandapur gave the list of 200 persons suspected of having links with foreign militants to the elders in Wana.

The men belong to various tribes of the region where security forces have been conducting operation to flush out militants. The sources said that the elders of the Ahmadzai Wazir tribe, who called on NWFP Governor Syed Iftikhar Hussain Shah in Peshawar last week, had proposed that they be given a list of wanted people.

"The elders also demanded that the government soften its policy regarding tribesmen and lift the three-month-old economic blockade of the Ahmadzai Wazir tribe in lieu of wanted men's surrender to the authorities," the sources said.

Under the collective responsibility clause of the 1901 Frontier Crimes Regulation (FCR), the tribesmen are bound to surrender wanted people to the authorities. Officials said that the name of Malik Baa Khan, who reportedly sought political asylum from the Afghan government, had been included in the list.

Malik Baa, who is in Kabul, had held meeting with President Hamid Karzai and requested him to provide political asylum in Kabul, according to Baa Khan's brother Ghaneem Khan. He alleged that the authorities had demolished 200 shops of the Baa Khan family in Wana as a punishment for developing contacts with the Afghan authorities.

The authorities also demanded the surrender of Maulana Mir Nawaz, who is private secretary to the sitting tribal MNA, Maulana Abdul Malik. In a related development, a 20-member tribal jirga led by a retired brigadier set out towards an undisclosed location in the region for holding talks with tribal militants.

Brig (retd) Qayyum Sher Mahsud is leading the jirga and is likely to hold negotiations with militant Abdullah Mahsud at an undisclosed location on Monday. The officials said that the 20-man jirga had started its work after receiving a green signal from the government. Before leaving Wana, the jirga members held a meeting with agency administrator Asmatullah Gandapur.

The sources said that the jirga would try and persuade the militant leader to give up resistance in the region. Abdullah Mahsud led fresh resistance in Laddah sub-division against security forces.

ENTRY DENIED: A three-member fact-finding committee of the Peshawar High Court Bar Association was denied entry into South Waziristan. The committee, headed by the bar's secretary-general, Wali Khan Afridi, had reached district Tank, adjacent to the agency, on Saturday and was planning to reach Wana on Sunday.