ISLAMABAD, Pakistan — President Asif Ali Zardari announced Friday that he was lifting a longtime ban on political activities in the restive tribal regions in the northwest, hoping to reduce the influence of the Taliban and Islamic militancy in the areas.
The seven semiautonomous tribal regions have never been fully incorporated into the country’s legal and political system. They are instead still governed by a set of 100-year-old rules, known as Frontier Crimes Regulations, dating from the British empire.
Rights groups have long denounced the rules as draconian and Pakistan’s political parties have urged the government to do away with them, calling them a dark legacy of British colonial rule.
“Today, I am announcing the permission of political activities in the F.A.T.A. to bring them into the main political stream,” Mr. Zardari said in a live broadcast, referring to the Federally Administered Tribal Areas, as the region is formally known.
Mr. Zardari chose a symbolic moment to make the announcement: the eve of the national holiday marking Pakistan’s 62nd year of independence from the British Empire.
But analysts here said the announcement also seemed timed to coincide with a visit by Richard C. Holbrooke, the Obama administration’s special envoy for the region, who is scheduled to arrive in Islamabad on Saturday.
The ban on political activities and parties had created a vacuum that was increasingly exploited by militants and religious extremists, allowing the Taliban and Al Qaeda to tighten their hold on the region as they mounted attacks on tribal elders and the area’s political overseers appointed by the central government, analysts and political workers here have said.
“Now, political parties can organize themselves in the tribal areas and political process can start,” said Sheik Mansoor Ahmed, an official of the governing Pakistan Peoples Party. “It was a longstanding demand.”
Farhatullah Khan Babar, the spokesman for Mr. Zardari, said that under the Constitution, the president was empowered to make regulations for the tribal areas, giving him the authority to lift the ban.
The reform package now envisages broad and fundamental changes in the colonial-era regulations, which had given the officials administering the areas, called political agents, unbridled power and authority.
Under the reforms, arbitrary arrest of men, women and children would be curtailed; a special judicial commission similar to a high court would be set up; and the finances of the political agents would be audited.
Still, the announcement was not welcomed uniformly.
Mr. Zardari’s coalition partners sharply distanced themselves from it.
“We were not consulted,” said Muhammad Zahid Khan, a senator belonging to the Awami National Party, A.N.P., a nationalist party that leads the government in the North-West Frontier Province.
“Whatever good or bad comes out of this decision, we do not own it,” he said.
Rights groups and analysts expressed concern over the lack of accord between the Pakistan Peoples Party and its coalition partners.
“The lack of agreement between the coalition partners would mean that the changes would become controversial and the whole process would not remain smooth,” said Ibn-e-Abdu Rahman, a director of Human Rights Commission of Pakistan, a private group.
“So far, as permission for political activities is concerned, it is a very healthy development,” he said. “It is an advance and would enable the people to gradually come out of the stagnant tribal relations.”
But he warned that there were still some vested interest groups in the tribal regions “that do not want complete democratization of the areas.”
Ahmed Rashid, a journalist based in Lahore and the best-selling author of the book “Taliban,” said he felt that the changes were introduced now under pressure by the United States and Britain.
“It is a good move,” Mr. Rashid said, “but I wish it had been done a year ago.”
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