Pakistan's Taliban movement has welcomed an offer by the country's prime minister to hold talks with them and has urged Islamabad to abandon the US-led "war on terror," a spokesman for the movement has said.

Maulvi Omar said the announcement by the federal government to hold talks with the Taliban would improve law and order in Pakistan.

There have been a growing number of suicide bombings in the past couple of months.

Omar told reporters: "The talks announcement by government will have extremely positive impact. The federal government should immediately stop the war for US interests."

Democratic era

Yousuf Raza Gilani, Pakistan's prime minister, on Saturday urged the armed groups to renounce violence and offered to hold talks with those who give up arms and join the new democratic era.

"We are ready to talk to all those people who give up arms and are ready to embrace peace," Gilani said to loud support from politicians while addressing parliament.

Omar said: "The government should immediately say goodbye to pro-US policies because there is no good in them for the government and the people of Pakistan."

He also welcomed the repeal of the Frontier Crimes Regulation (FCR), a colonial era legal code for Pakistani tribal areas bordering Afghanistan, and said that Islamic law be enforced in its place.

"The prime minister has won the hearts of the tribal people by ending the FCR, but the government should, keeping in view the wishes of tribal people, immediately announce enforcement of [an] Islamic system," he said.

Sharia

Kamal Hyder, Al Jazeera's correspondent in Islamabad, said the movement's demand was a "tricky issue".

"For them [Taliban] to act in a state within a state is going to be difficult. But if the demand of the people where they are based is the imposition of Sharia, then the government could grant it," he said.

Pakistan has been a bulwark in the US-led fight against al-Qaeda and the Taliban since the September 11, 2001, attacks on the United States.

The country has suffered an unprecedented wave of violence including suicide bombings in the past year blamed on al-Qaeda and Taliban.

Pervez Musharraf, the Pakistani president and a key US ally, lost elections last month, and Gilani on Tuesday told George Bush, the US president, that a broader approach to the "war on terror" was necessary, including political solutions.

PHOTO CAPTION

Pakistan's Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gilani addresses the National Assembly in Islamabad March 29, 2008.

Al-Jazeera