Policeman killed as violence resurges in Pakistan

By Junaid Khan

MINGORA, Pakistan (Reuters) - Islamist fighters killed a policeman and wounded three on Friday in a gunbattle in northwest Pakistan, where violence has resurged after a Taliban leader withdrew from peace talks brokered by tribal elders.

Separately, ten people were wounded, four of them seriously, when a bomb exploded near a hotel in the southwestern city of Quetta, capital of the gas-rich southwestern province of Baluchistan where tribal militants are fighting for regional autonomy.

Pakistan suffered a wave of suicide attacks and bomb blasts following an army assault on a radical mosque in Islamabad in July last year, but there was a lull in the violence after a new government, made up of parties opposed to President Pervez Musharraf, came to power in late March.

The new government said it would negotiate to bring peace to the region along the border with Afghanistan, and is trying to use influence with the fiercely independent tribes living there to quell the Taliban insurgency.

The focus is on Baitullah Mehsud, the leader of the Pakistani Taliban, based in South Waziristan. Mehsud's notoriety soared after Pakistani and U.S. intelligence made him prime suspect in the assassination of opposition leader Benazir Bhutto, whose Pakistan People's Party leads a four-party coalition government.

The Taliban leader announced a ceasefire last month but later pulled out of talks after the government refused to accept his demand that the army withdraw troops from Mehsud tribal lands.

On Tuesday, a suicide bomber killed three people, including a policeman, in the town of Bannu, near North Waziristan.

On Thursday, troops blocked the main road leading to South Waziristan after Mehsud's fighters set up their own checkposts.