PESHAWAR – A joint committee was drawn up by conference participants and tasked with facilitating proposed government-Taliban peace talks.
PESHAWAR – A joint committee was drawn up by conference participants and tasked with facilitating proposed government-Taliban peace talks.
Opposition parties have called on the Pakistani government to “dissociate” itself from the US ‘war on terror’ and initiate peace talks with the Taliban movement.
“This all-party conference urged the federal government to… disassociate itself from [the] war on terror and nominate its team to initiate dialogue with [the] Taliban,” read a joint communiqué issued following the Friday meeting in Peshawar.
Called by Jamat-e-Islami, one of Pakistan’s two mainstream religious parties, the conference was attended by all major opposition parties, including the left-wing Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) and the Awami National Party (ANP).
A joint committee was drawn up by conference participants and tasked with facilitating proposed government-Taliban peace talks.
The communiqué proposed inviting armed groups to sit down with the government in an effort to reach a ceasefire agreement and initiate talks.
The ruling Pakistan Muslim League (PML) and Pakistan-Terhrik-e-Insaf (PTI) of cricketer-turned-politician Imran Khan, which rules the northwestern Khyber Pakhtunkhawa (KP) province, did not attend the conference.
“The two ruling parties had been condemning the war on terror before they came to power, but their absence from the conference was noticed by everyone,” Peshawar-based analyst Sameen Jan told Anadolu Agency.
Jamat-e-Islami, which organized the conference, is also a coalition partner of the PTI in the local KP government.
“The PML’s absence is understandable because they had already refused to attend the all-party conference on grounds that an official all-party conference had already been held, therefore there was no need for another conference,” Jan said.
“But the PTI’s absence is completely un-understandable to me because it has continuously been blaming the Sharif government for not initiating dialogue with the Taliban,” the analyst added.
Over 40,000 Pakistanis – including 4,500 security personnel – have been killed since 2002, when Pakistan joined Washington’s so-called ‘war on terror.’
Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif had offered an olive branch to the Taliban in his first televised address to the nation last month after being elected to the premiership for a third term.
Later, attendees of a government-convened all-party conference on September 19 decided to hold talks with the Taliban in hopes of bringing an end to the over-decade-long militant insurgency in the South-Asian Muslim nation.
The proposal, however, has been marred by successive militant attacks in the KP province and continued US drone strikes in the troubled Waziristan region.
The Taliban, for its part, has conditioned talks on a complete ceasefire and an end to drone strikes.
