ISLAMABAD (Reuters) - Suspected Taliban militants have released Pakistan's envoy to Afghanistan more than three months after he was kidnapped in Pakistan's Khyber tribal region, a senior government official told Reuters on Saturday.

"I can confirm he is released, and he is safe and sound," Foreign Ministry spokesman Mohammed Sadiq said.

Tariq Azizuddin, 56, went missing on February 11 along with his driver and a guard as he was traveling from the northwestern city of Peshawar to the Afghan-Pakistani border. He was on his way back to the Afghan capital, where he had been ambassador since 2005.

The route winds through the historic Khyber Pass, the main link between landlocked Afghanistan and northwestern Pakistan, and a major supply route for foreign forces in Afghanistan.

Pakistani television channels said the envoy had been freed in Afghanistan.

A relative said Azizuddin was expected to return home to his family in Pakistan shortly.

"The authorities contacted us and said that Aziz has been released and he would be back by the evening," a family member told Reuters.

Last month, Azizuddin appeared in a video on an Arabic television saying he was being held by the Taliban and urged the Pakistani government to meet their demands.

The bespectacled and grey-bearded ambassador also complained of high blood pressure and chest pains in the video, which showed two of his captors wearing baggy trousers and tunic, common to the frontier region, and brandishing assault rifles.

Azizuddin did not say what demands the Taliban were making, but Pakistani media reports had reported they had called for the release of several jailed militants.

A spokesman for the Pakistani Taliban, however, had earlier denied that members the guerrilla movement were responsible for abducting the envoy.

Pakistan's new government, sworn in at the end of March, has begun a policy of engagement, negotiating through tribal leaders to bring peace to a region where Pakistani security forces have been struggling to contain a growing Taliban insurgency.

The long tribal belt on the border is notorious for being a haven for smugglers and bandits and turned into a major sanctuary for al Qaeda and the Taliban militants who fled from Afghanistan after a U.S.-led invasion in the wake of the September 11 attacks in 2001.

Scores of people have been abducted in the dangerous border region and the ambassador's disappearance highlighted mounting lawlessness in the tribal areas.

The security situation in Pakistan has deteriorated markedly since mid-2007, mainly in the northwest, with militants linked to the Taliban and al Qaeda carrying out suicide bombings.

More than 600 people have been killed in militant related violence since the beginning of this year, but since the peace talks began the violence has tapered off.

(Additional reporting by Sheree Sardar and Kamran Haider; Editing by David Fox)

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