The New Nation - Internet Edition

Agency, Islamabad

Pakistan has banned the Taleban militant group which has been behind many suicide attacks in the country since 2007.

The Tehreek-e-Taleban Pakistan (TTP) will have its bank accounts and assets frozen, the interior ministry said.

Last week the Taleban claimed responsibility for an attack on a munitions plant in Punjab province in which 67 people were killed.

It is not yet clear what impact the ban will have on the militants.

The TTP is a loose grouping of militants headed by Baitullah Mehsud who is based in Pakistan's South Waziristan tribal district on Afghanistan's border.

The ban on the Taleban comes a day after the man likely to be Pakistan's next president, Asif Ali Zardari, advocated such a move in a BBC interview.

"We have banned Tehreek-e-Taleban Pakistan because of their involvement in a series of suicide attacks," interior ministry chief Rehman Malik said.

"They themselves have claimed responsibility of several suicide attacks and the government cannot engage in a dialogue with such people," he said.

Malik said the Taleban had "created mayhem against the public life".

A ministry official told the BBC that the state bank had been asked to freeze any accounts the organisation might have. The Pakistan Taleban is fighting for an Islamic state. They see it as their religious duty to fight the international forces currently in Afghanistan, the BBC's Charles Haviland in Islamabad says. Meeting journalists in May, Baitullah Mehsud said his organisation did not want to fight Pakistan's army, but that it was being forced to because the army were "slaves to US demands".

There have been a number of local ceasefire deals with the Taleban and other militants but none have been successful in stopping the violence or preventing incursions into Afghanistan, our correspondent says.

The Pakistani Taleban have "the upper hand" and should be put on the list of banned organisations in Pakistan, Benazir Bhutto's widower has said.

Asif Ali Zardari said, in a BBC interview, that the world and Pakistan were losing the war on terror.

"It is an insurgency", he said, "and an ideological war. It is our country and we will defend it.

"The world is losing the war. I think at the moment they (the Taleban) definitely have the upper hand.

"The issue, which is not just a bad case scenario as far as Pakistan is concerned or as Afghanistan is concerned but it is going to be spreading further. The whole world is going to be affected by it."

Zardari's strong remarks came shortly after the Pakistan People's Party (PPP) put his name forward as its presidential nominee.

The president is elected by the members of parliament and the four provincial assemblies, and Zardari says he is confident he has the numbers he needs to win on 6 September.

Asif Zardari spent more than a decade in prison on murder and corruption charges but he insisted that the cases had failed because they were politically motivated.

He also dismissed reports that the Swiss authorities were still considering whether they should pursue a money-laundering case against him there.