The Pakistani Prime Minister, Nawaz Sharif, has opened the country's first commercial ski resort at Malam Jabba in the Swat valley in northern Pakistan.

Mr Sharif said the resort should be run as a revenue-gathering venture with an international partner.

The project has had help from Austria, which donated skiing equipment and a chairlift.

The BBC Islamabad Correspondent says though work on the scheme started in the sixties, bureaucratic delay and technical problems have slowed its completion.