Peshawar:
Hundreds of tribesmen from Pakistan's semiautonomous regions near the Afghan border ended a rare tribal council meeting on Saturday with a declaration calling for the army to crush the Taliban.
The meeting, held in the northwestern city of Peshawar, was called by an umbrella group of aid organisations and political parties in an effort to bring together people from the violence-battered region.
Participants called for the army to escalate its attack against the network of Islamist militants across the tribal regions, dismissing Pakistan's earlier offensives as "military dramas."
"It should be a genuine military operation like the Sri Lankans did against the Tamil Tigers," said Sayd Alam Mehsud, a powerful tribal leader, referring to the military campaign that destroyed the separatist Tamil army in Sri Lanka.
They also called for more power for traditional councils.
Tribal councils - or "jirgas" - play a central role in the Pashtun culture that dominates the region along the Pakistan-Afghanistan border.
These regions have been the scene of bloody fighting and regular attacks by American drone aircraft as the Pakistani and US governments try to defeat the militants.
Smaller council meetings are used in tribal areas to decide matters ranging from local administration to criminal cases.
While Saturday's meeting was not a formal jirga, it is rare to have so many tribal leaders gather together.
A declaration at the end of the meeting called democracy vital to rooting out terrorism, arguing that Pakistan's powerful military - which many see as the true power behind the country's elected government - should keep out of politics.
"A sapling of terrorism cannot grow in democracy. Any attempt to derail democracy is like letting the terrorists walk all over us," the declaration said.
Participants said they had little faith in the US-Pakistan alliance, and that Washington and Islamabad were more worried about internal political issues than dealing with the deep-set social issues at the root of much of the violence.
"If we do not address the mindset of the terrorists, we will not be able to eliminate terrorists," said Mehsud.
The tribal leaders urged the government in Pakistan to reach out to the militants - but also to crush those unwilling to negotiate.
But Haji Attaullah Mehsud, a Jirga participant from North Waziristan insisted that the army was not the solution.
"Talibans are our brothers, they did not came from other countries," he said.
"Dialogue is the only solution. It can't be solved through power, that destroyed all of our area, they destroyed the whole of Waziristan."
A government offensive that began last fall in Waziristan is thought to have killed hundreds of people, militants and civilians, in the area.
Meanwhile, in the southern city of Karachi, police arrested three Taliban militants on Saturday and seized a bomb-making factory, a counter-terrorism official said.
Violence has surged in Pakistan in recent days as militants - thought to be part of a loose network of Islamist insurgents fighting the US-allied Islamabad government - launched a wave of suicide bombings.