Pakistan says it will definitely defeat the Taliban but expresses concern over the plight of refugees displaced by the Swat war.

"Militarily we will win the war but it will be unfortunate if we loose it publicly," Pakistani Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani told the parliament in Islamabad on Thursday.

By "publicly", Gilani sought to describe how the propaganda unleashed against Pakistan since the beginning of the military operations and the Swat takeover has hurt the image of his country.

Army sources say 54 militants and nine soldiers have been killed in Swat Valley over the past 24 hours.

The army crackdown on militants has killed nearly 1,000 insurgents and dozens of troops since two weeks ago -- when the offensives began from the Lower Dir and Buner districts, located about 62 miles (100km) from the capital Islamabad.

Around 15,000 troops are facing an estimated 4,000 to 5,000 militants in the troubled northwestern Swat region, according to military sources.

Some reports say that over 30,000 heavily armed insurgents from Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Jordan along with local Taliban have ensured their presence in the volatile valley and its adjoining regions.

The militants have entrenched themselves for a long-drawn-out war by planting mines and explosives across the valley.

Major political parties and common people support the army offensives against the Taliban, but opposition is expected to grow if the displaced are seen to be enduring undue hardship.

Gilani has also decided to call an "all-parties conference" to take political factions into confidence over the ongoing military operation against the insurgents who seek a hostile takeover of the nuclear-armed country, Press TV has learned.

The UN has put the number of registered refugees fleeing the fighting between the Pakistani army and the Taliban insurgents at over 834,000.

Some independent sources have estimated the total number of refugees internally displaced by the conflict to be much higher.

The situation in the insurgency-ridden region is such that the UN and the Red Cross have warned that a major humanitarian crisis is looming on the horizon.

Human right groups say Pakistan is facing its biggest exodus since 1947, when it secured independence from Britain.

The violence in Pakistan comes seven and a half years after US-led forces invaded neighboring Afghanistan in 2001, allegedly to oust the Taliban, to destroy al-Qaeda, to capture Osama bin Laden and to bring security to the volatile region.

JR/HGH/AA