PESHAWAR, Feb 16: The Taliban are winning ever-greater public support in Afghanistan for a struggle that is taking on the character of a ‘liberation war’ against foreign troops, the NWFP governor said on Friday.

The statement coincided with a Taliban claim that they had deployed 10,000 fighters for a spring offensive of ‘bloody attacks’ against foreign troops in Afghanistan.

Western forces in Afghanistan are also forecasting fierce fighting this spring once warmer weather allows militants to move more easily through the mountains and resume efforts to bring down the Karzai government.

In his statement, the governor called upon the forces of the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation and the United States in Afghanistan to match Pakistan’s commitment to preventing cross-border infiltration.

“We are doing the best we can, but we expect reciprocity from our coalition partners,” Ali Jan Mohammad Aurakzai told foreign journalists at his official residence in Peshawar.

Mr Aurakzai said Pakistan had 1,000 military posts along the 2,500-kilometre frontier with Afghanistan, compared with around 100 Nato and US-led posts on the other side.

“Why are they (Nato and US forces) sitting 30 or 40 kilometres away from the border?” Mr Aurakzai said.

Cross-border attacks accounted for only a fraction of the resistance the western troops were facing in Afghanistan, the governor said. “There are maybe five per cent, 10 per cent, okay 20 per cent (of the Taliban) from this side, but 80 per cent of them are in Afghanistan,” he said.

The main reason for the Taliban’s return was the frustration of Pukhtuns seeking more political say in Kabul and resentment of military operations and the lack of economic aid in the south and east of Afghanistan, Mr Aurakzai observed.

“Today, they’ve reached the stage that a lot of the local population has started supporting the militant operations and it is developing into some sort of a nationalist movement, a resistance movement, sort of a liberation war against coalition forces,” the governor said.

He forecast that the Taliban would take years to defeat, and that the Kabul government and its foreign backers would one day have to negotiate with the Taliban.

“Eventually, all issues will have to be resolved through dialogue on the negotiating table,” he said.

“Military operations cannot be continued until infinity. A stage has to come where the military operations have to stop and the political process has to take on from there.”

He also accused the Taliban of using Afghan refugee camps in Pakistan as recruitment centres.

Afghan President Hamid Karzai and some US military officials have, more than once, alleged that Pakistani forces are secretly aiding militants crossing into Afghanistan to mount attacks.

In recent days, US officials including President George Bush have praised Pakistan’s contribution and sought to ease the row.

More than 4,000 people -- a quarter of them civilians -- were killed in fighting last year, the most violent year since the Taliban were ousted in 2001.

WAZIRISTAN DEAL DEFENDED: The NWFP governor defended the September peace deal with militants in North Waziristan and disputed suggestions that it had led to a surge in cross-border attacks.