Imran Khan’s party boycotts 4th round of talks with govt negotiators

Islamabad : The dialogue process between the government and opposition Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf ran aground on Tuesday after jailed former premier Imran Khan’s party refused to join a scheduled huddle aiming to defuse the prevailing political tension in the country.

National Assembly Speaker Ayaz Sadiq, who had fixed the meeting at the request of government negotiators, waited at the Parliament House with the government team for the PTI leaders to join, but they failed to turn up as already party founder Imran Khan had instructed to shun talks if the government failed to form probe commissions as demanded by him.

The talks began last month and three rounds have been held. The PTI handed over a list of demands at the last sitting on January 17. It had also given a seven-day deadline to form two judicial bodies to probe the protests of May 9, 2023 and Nov 26, 2024.

The government announced that it had reservations about the demands and prepared its response to present to the PTI team during the fourth round, which failed to materialize.

Speaker Sadiq told the media that the government committee waited for the opposition members for 45 minutes, but they did not come. He added that in the last meeting of the government negotiations with PTI, it was decided that a meeting would be called on January 28 after seven working days.

He said that PTI members were contacted by telephone before the meeting and none of the members said that he would not attend, adding that a message was sent to the opposition leader Omer Ayub Khan to join the meeting, but the response was that he might not be able to come.

“We expected that the negotiations would move forward. We were expecting that negotiations were the only way through which everything could move forward,” he said, adding that in the absence of the opposition, the meeting could not proceed.

Sadiq said that he was still ready to facilitate the two sides to discuss the problems and try to find a solution without setting pre-conditions.

Spokesman of the government side, Irfan Siddiqui, told the media that the PTI effectively ended the negotiation process by not participating in the process, but the negotiation committee would remain in place until January 31. “If the PTI contacts Speaker Ayaz Sadiq again during this period regarding the negotiations, the government committee will talk”.

Siddiqui also said that the PTI took 42 days to present its demands, after which the government committee asked for only seven working days and during this period, comprehensive work was done. He refused to share the details of the official response to the PTI demands.

PTI Chairman Gohar Khan said on Friday that as per Khan’s instructions, “we will not attend any other negotiation committee meeting” because the government was not serious about setting up two probe commissions. — (PTI)