NEW YORK - Backing the Swat peace deal, Tehreek-i-Insaf party leader Imran khan Sunday urged President Barack Obama to stop the deadly drone attacks inside Pakistani tribal areas, saying there was no military solution to the Taliban insurgency. Speaking on the CNN, the cricket-turned politician called for political dialogue with the militants, saying it was mportant for the Obama administration to to realize that winning over the Pushtun population is essential and argued that the real threat has always been al-Qaeda and not the Taliban. For Pakistan, he said, there were no options left, except to try and restore peace in the troubled areas through dialogue. He called the Swat arrangement "fairly moderate." The Obama Administration should not rely heavily on the use of military force because that would be a repetition of the former Bush administration's flawed and directionless Afghan policy. "What I am hoping from Obama is that he will, somewhere along the line, realize, as the British have, that this war is not an option in Afghanistan, they have to understand the psyche of the people, their history," he said on CNN's GPS prpgramme with Fareed Zakaria. Imran khan strongly opposed the drone attacks on Pakistani territory, terming them extremely counterproductive for the toll they take on innocent civilians. Such measures, he said, radicalize the people and shrink the space for moderates. "There has to be a change of strategy, there is no military solution to this," he said. citing the Soviet Union's defeat in Afghanistan despite the fact that they killed a million people in that country. The Tehreek chief said if the war goes in Afghanistan, Pakistan will continue to suffer from its blowback effect. "The Americans should have isolated al-Qaeda from the Taliban. The Taliban had nothing to do with terrorism. Yes, they were fundamentalists. But they were not terrorists," he said, arguing that the US attacks against the Taliban and then not being able to deliver on the promises of good governance system, brought things to the current mess in Afghanistan. '"The only way forward is dialogue, which is what (Afghan President) Hamid Karzai is finally saying. You have to start talking to the Taliban."