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Islamabad — Nawaz Sharif, Pakistan’s prime minister, has reiterated his government’s commitment to an abortive dialogue process with the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), while stressing that “dialogue and terrorism cannot go together”.Addressing the country’s parliament in Islamabad yesterday, Sharif announced the formation of a four-member committee to initiate dialogue with the armed group, which has carried out increasingly sophisticated attacks against the state since 2007 and operates from Pakistan’s largely ungoverned tribal areas.
Sharif’s comments came minutes after a series of co-ordinated attacks, claimed by the TTP, killed at least three people in the southern port city of Karachi.
The new committee comprises Irfan Siddiqui and Rahimullah Yousafzai, two senior journalists; retired Major Muhammad Amir, a former intelligence operative; and Rustum Shah Mohmand, a former Pakistani ambassador to Afghanistan.
It is unclear what the mandate of the committee is, and Sharif said that the team did not currently have a timeframe within which to conduct negotiations.
Chaudhry Nisar Ali Khan, Pakistan’s interior minister, will chair the committee while Sharif said that he would “oversee” its work himself.
Sharif’s PML-N-led government was elected on a campaign promise of bringing peace to the violence-wracked South Asian country through negotiations with the Taliban, and has doggedly stuck to this line since being elected in May 2013.
Terrorist attacks must stop. Dialogue and terrorism cannot go together. Since then, violence related to armed groups has claimed at least 1,561 civilian lives in Pakistan, most of them in attacks claimed by the TTP or its allies. — AP
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