Islamabad: The Pakistan government today did a flip-flop on the issue of scrapping a controversial peace agreement with Taliban militants in the country's northwest, saying the pact was still intact.

Rehman Malik, the Advisor to the Prime Minister on Interior Affairs, told a group of reporters yesterday that the deal signed last month with local Taliban in the restive Swat valley was being scrapped as the militants were continuing their attacks on security forces.

His comments came a day after four policemen were killed in an ambush in Peshawar, the capital of the North West Frontier Province. The attack was blamed on the local Taliban.

However, a spokesman of the interior ministry today said the Swat peace deal with the militants had not been scrapped. The spokesman refuted news items attributed to Malik and said the Advisor had only referred to "continued violent activities of militants".

The spokesman also said the peace deal was inked by the provincial government of the NWFP.

The NWFP government had reacted strongly to the reports of the scrapping of the pace deal, saying Malik should have consulted it before making such statements. Provincial ministers also said the federal government, PPP co-chairman Asif Ali Zardari and army chief Gen Ashfaq Parvez Kayani had been consulted before the agreement was signed.

The Taliban too had reacted angrily to the reports, threatening to turn cities like Islamabad into "battlefields" if the government scrapped the truce.

Source : PTI