MINGORA, Feb 17: Tehrik Nifaz-i-Shariat Muhammadi chief Maulana Sufi Mohammad urged the people of Swat on Tuesday to support efforts for peace so that the region was put back on the path to progress and prosperity.

(According to AP news agency, Maulana Sufi said his party would soon hold talks with the Taliban. “We will ask them to lay down their weapons. We are hopeful that they will not let us down,” Maulana Sufi told reporters. “We will stay here in the valley until peace is restored.”)

Addressing a large number of people and TNSM workers here, Maulana Sufi praised the people of Swat for putting up a fight for the enforcement of Sharia in Malakand division and Kohistan district of Hazara division.

He said the Islamic system would bring about revolutionary changes to the lives of ordinary people.

Maulana Sufi arrived at the head of a caravan of some 300 vehicles in Mingora, a day after he struck a peace agreement with the ANP-led NWFP government. Thousands of people lined the route to welcome the cleric.

Maulana Sufi urged the people to unite under the banner of TNSM and assured them that their problems would be solved after the enforcement of Sharia.

“Our long-standing demand for Sharia has been accepted and it is now our responsibility to work for its success.”

He announced shifting his ‘peace camp’ from Dir to Swat.

A TNSM spokesman, Amir Izzat Khan, told reporters that the party leadership had expressed ‘satisfaction’ over the peace agreement reached with the provincial government. He said Sharia in its “true sense” had been introduced to the region.

He said the TNSM had shifted its movement to Swat after “victory” in Dir. “We will soon contact Swat’s Taliban leaders and talks with them would succeed in the first round,” he hoped.

Sources said that a three-member committee, comprising TNSM’s leaders Maulana Safiullah, Amir Izzat Khan and Bacha Sardar, had been set up for talks with the Taliban. The decision was taken at a meeting of the party’s central committee in Mingora on Tuesday night.

ISPR’s assurance

The military on Tuesday vowed to hold fire and respect an agreement signed between the government and militants to enforce Sharia in the violence-torn Swat valley.

“The army works on the government’s orders. The government has given it orders to hold fire. The army will not take any offensive action,” chief military spokesman Maj-Gen Athar Abbas told AFP.

The army will ‘certainly’ respect the agreement, he said.

“The army went there (Swat) at the request of the government. Whenever the government feels normalcy has been restored and the writ of government has been re-established, it will leave,” he said.