PESHAWAR, Pakistan, Oct 7 (Reuters) - Having escaped assassination by a suicide bomber last week, an influential politician in northwest Pakistan said on Tuesday he was ready to negotiate with Islamist militants so long as they laid down arms.

"I want to make it clear that I can't negotiate at gunpoint," Asfandyar Wali Khan, head of the ruling party in the North West Frontier Province (NWFP), told a news conference in Peshawar.

The bomber killed himself and three others in the attack near Khan's house in the town of Charsadda last week.

Pakistani Taliban based in the lawless ethnic Pashtun tribal lands bordering Afghanistan claimed responsibility.

"I again appeal to these people, even though they have taken responsibility for the attack, that they come and sit because issues can be resolved through talks not through guns," Khan said.

After coming into power in March, Khan's Awami National Party struck peace deals with the militants in the hope of ending violence in NWFP where hundreds of people have perished in a wave of suicide and bomb attacks since mid-2007.

However, the militants scrapped the peace deals after security forces launched operations against them in nearby tribal areas, regarded as havens for al Qaeda and Taliban militants. (Reporting by Zeeshan Haider; Editing by Simon Cameron-Moore)

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