PESHAWAR, Pakistan - Taliban militants completed their pullback from a district just 60 miles from the Pakistani capital, and troops fanned out in their wake, a senior official said Saturday.

The Taliban's retreat to its stronghold in the Swat Valley brings some relief for Pakistani officials trying to salvage a controversial peace deal that halted nearly two years of bloody fighting in the northwestern region.

But U.S. officials kept up their pressure for more forceful action against Islamist groups that pose a growing threat to nuclear-armed Pakistan's stability as well as to American troops battling in neighboring Afghanistan.

Militants from Swat seized Buner, a jumble of mountains and farmsteads on the west bank of the Indus River, after President Asif Ali Zardari earlier this month signed the peace pact, which provides for the introduction of Islamic Shariah law in the region.

They began pulling out on Friday as officials issued increasingly loud threats of military action and a hard-line cleric who mediated the peace deal intervened to defuse the tension.

Syed Mohammad Javed, the top government official in Malakand Division, which includes Swat and Buner, said Saturday all the militants had crossed the mountain passes into Swat.

"They all have gone back," Javed said. "No one is left in Buner."

He also said six platoons of paramilitary troops had deployed to police stations across Buner.

Javed said the cleric, Sufi Muhammad, also gave his assurance that Swat militants would soon retreat to Swat from another adjoining area, Shangla.

The Taliban's push into Buner raised alarm in Pakistan and the West that militants increasingly threaten key cities such as Islamabad and the vital northwestern hub of Peshawar.