The commander said the cease-fire has been in effect for the past month and was valid throughout the country.

“We are not attacking the Pakistan army and government installations because of the peace process,” he said late Monday.

The commander is close to Hakimullah Mehsud, the leader of the Taleban.

His statement adds credence to recent announcements by anonymous Taleban and intelligence officials that government intermediaries recently met Taleban commanders to talk about a possible peace deal.

The government has not officially commented, and on Tuesday the Pakistani Army denied it was involved in any talks.

The Pakistan Taleban, an umbrella grouping of militants allied with Al-Qaeda and based in the northwest close to the Afghan border, has been behind many of the scores of bloody suicide attacks around Pakistan over the last 4 1/2 years. At least 35,000 people have been killed in the bloodshed.

The United States wants Pakistan to keep the pressure on insurgents and would likely be concerned about any effort to strike a deal.  Many of its fiercest foes in Afghanistan, as well as Al-Qaeda operatives from around the world, live alongside the Pakistan Taleban in North Waziristan.

Much remains unclear about the nature of the talks and their potential. Both the army and the militants have engaged in misinformation before.

Some reports have said any deal would only cover one region in the northwest, South Waziristan, but could be extended.

Meanwhile, a bomb attack on a girls' school in the northwest on Tuesday killed a policeman, wounded eight others and destroyed a wall, police said.

The remote-controlled bomb was planted at the outer wall of the government-run middle school in the outskirts of Mardan town in troubled Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, which borders Afghanistan.

The bomb exploded after police arrived to investigate complaints about a suspicious plastic bag outside the school, which was closed at the time.

"One policeman was killed and eight other people including five civilians were wounded," Zeshan Haider, Mardan police chief, told AFP. Three policemen were also wounded but no pupils were hurt.

Haider said the target was the school.

"The outer wall of the school was also destroyed," he added.

Islamist militants oppose co-education and have destroyed hundreds of schools, mostly for girls, in northwest Pakistan in recent years.

Early Tuesday, Talsban militants killed two anti-Taleban militia men on the outskirts of Peshawar, the capital of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, police said.

Dilawar Khan, head of the anti-Taleban militia, said that Taleban killed his men and dumped their bodies in Matni, one of the northwestern areas where villagers have raised militias to fight the militants.