AFP - More than 170 Taliban and other Islamist fighters have surrendered as part of a government amnesty scheme, vowing to lay down arms and work to rebuild war-ravaged Afghanistan, officials said.

The men travelled from various provinces from across Afghanistan to Kabul for a ceremony at which their surrender was announced by the head of the government's reconciliation commission, Sebghattullah Mujaddadi.

They included members of the extremist Hezb-e-Islami faction of wanted warlord Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, an anti-Soviet resistance commander who is part of a bloody anti-government insurgency.

"In the ceremony today 172 brothers who were former Taliban and Hezb-e-Islami surrendered," commission spokesman Sayed Sharif Yousufi told AFP Sunday.

More than 1,000 Taliban and Hezb-e-Islami members have signed up to the amnesty scheme since it was launched less than a year ago, Yousufi said.

One of the former fighters, Qazi Joma Khan from the Hezb-e-Islami faction, said the men wanted to help rebuild Afghanistan.

"We vow to help ensure security and peace and take part in reconstruction of our country," he said.

"We promise not to stand against the government any more," said ex-Taliban, Mawlawi Abdul Rehman.

President Hamid Karzai has offered amnesty to members of the Taliban movement, which was in power from 1996 to 2001, and other Islamic militias "whose hands are not stained with innocent people's blood" from the past 25 years of war.

Among those who have taken up the offer are former Taliban foreign minister Wakil Ahmad Muttawakil and the Taliban regime's ambassador to Pakistan, Abdul Salam Zaeef.

The insurgency by Taliban and other Islamic insurgents, including some with links to Al-Qaeda, has claimed more than 1,700 lives in the past year with most of the dead militants killed by Afghan and foreign security forces.

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