BRUSSELS, May 14: Nato announced on Wednesday a sharp increase in insurgent attacks in east Afghanistan and raised concerns that it was partly due to pacts between Pakistan and militants in tribal areas on its side of the border.

The number of violent incidents in the Afghan east, overseen by US-Nato troops, stood last month at 50 per cent above the same time last year, an alliance spokesman said. The violence there was close to a peak reached last August, he added.

“The main concern is the extremists regroup, rest, reconstitute and then move through the border again,” he said.

“The concern is that the deals struck by the Pakistan government and extremist groups in tribal areas may be allowing them to have a safe haven,” spokesman James Appathurai told a regular briefing after a meeting of alliance ambassadors.

“This has been communicated to Pakistani authorities. We do not want and do not intend to engage in the internal political activities of Pakistan, but we have every right to and will convey our concerns about what is happening inside Afghanistan,” he said, noting that Nato Secretary-General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer would travel to Islamabad soon for talks with the government there.

He did not allude to specific deals and he declined to give the absolute number of attacks by insurgents in April.

Existing pacts, including the one struck in North Waziristan in late 2006, are widely regarded by western officials as having failed to end violence and even given insurgents a safe launchpad for attacks within Afghanistan.

Nato until recently had hailed the improving security conditions in east Afghanistan as signs that its 47,000-strong force was winning. The area was viewed as a success for US efforts to combine military clout with reconstruction efforts.

The alliance has begun internal discussions about the possibility of the United States in future taking over leadership of military operations in violent south Afghanistan and applying a similar model there.—Agencies