The purpose of this paper is to justify an asymptotic method developed for the study of peristaltic transport in a tube of arbitrary cross section. Within the framework of long wave approximation, the three-dimensional nonlinear Navier-Stokes equations are reduced to a sequence of two-dimensional linear boundary value problems of Laplace and biharmonic operators. It is shown that, if a Reynolds number is less than some constant, the solution of the approximate equations is indeed an asymptotic approximation to the exact solution of the problem as the ratio of the maximum radius of the tube to the wave length of the peristaltic motion of the wall tends to zero, and the error estimates are expressed in L 2 norms. Furthermore, under the same condition the exact solution is shown to be unique and stable under arbitrary perturbation of spatially periodic disturbance. Application of the stability condition to peristaltic transport in a tube of circular cross section is given.