Taliban announced a ceasefire and Pakistani forces halted military operations in Swat last month after the cleric, Maulana Sufi Mohammad, struck a pact with the government of North West Frontier Province to enforce Islamic law in the valley.

Mohammad set a March 10 deadline for the government and the Taliban to free each other's prisoners, but also set another for the government to make good its commitment to implement Islamic law if peace was restored.

"We also asked the government to implement Nifaz-e-Adl (a system of Islamic justice) by March 15 after which we will launch a protest," Mohammad told a news conference in Mingora, the main town in the valley.

Mohammad had last month appealed for the security forces and fighters to release prisoners, remove barricades on the roads, and for the troops deployed in schools, houses, mosques and hospitals to be shifted to safer places.

But he expressed his dismay over what he called inaction by the government, and for dragging its feet over the enforcement of sharia in Swat, in the mountains just 130 km (90 miles) north of the capital, Islamabad.

On Saturday, Mohammad's son-in-law, Fazlullah, who leads the Taliban in Swat, said on FM radio that the government's reluctance to release captured fighters was harmful to peace efforts. Fighters had released seven men after the agreement.

Reuters