EU advises Pakistan against talks with al Qaeda

ISLAMABAD (Reuters) - The European Union's foreign policy chief said Pakistan should resist talking with al Qaeda in its efforts to quell militancy in tribal areas bordering Afghanistan.

Javier Solana told a news conference in Islamabad that al Qaeda leaders were operating outside Pakistan's law and constitution.

When asked whether he supported the idea of Pakistan negotiating with them, Solana gave a firm response: "The answer is no."

Western allies are concerned that any let-up in military pressure on militants in the semi-autonomous ethnic Pashtun tribal lands will give al Qaeda breathing space to organize fresh attacks in the West.

Pakistan's new government, sworn in at the end of March, wants to break with the policies of President Pervez Musharraf, whose strategies, ranging from military offensives to appeasement, resulted in mounting violence over the past year.

Musharraf has deployed close to 90,000 troops along the Pakistan-Afghan border to counter the threat from al Qaeda and the Taliban.

But the troops are regarded as trespassers by many of the fiercely independent, and religiously conservative Pashtuns.

The new government wants to convince people that their real enemies are the foreign militants and tribal renegades who have brought violence to their lands.

The coalition government, which includes a secular ethnic Pashtun party, hopes to persuade all but the most recalcitrant tribesmen to put away their arms and has ruled out talking to foreign militants.

"The government would want to give dialogue and reconciliation its utmost full chance," Foreign Minister Shah Mehmood Qureshi told the news conference, adding that there were "other options" if this failed.

Qureshi also dismissed talk of any link between efforts to free Pakistan's kidnapped ambassador to Afghanistan and the release of an old and infirm militant leader.

Sufi Mohammad, a cleric and leader of the Tehrik-e-Nifaz-e-Shariat Mohammadi (Movement for Implementation of Mohammad's Sharia Law), was freed on Monday.

On Saturday, an Arabic news channel aired a videotape of the Pakistani envoy, Tariq Azizuddin, calling for the government to meet the demands of his Taliban captors.

Azizuddin was kidnapped, along with his driver, in February in Pakistan's Khyber tribal region near the Afghan border.

(Reporting by Aftab Borqa; Writing by Simon Cameron-Moore; Editing by Alex Richardson)