{"id":1184,"date":"2021-10-01T13:24:16","date_gmt":"2021-10-01T13:24:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.asiafreepress.com\/?p=1184"},"modified":"2021-10-01T13:24:18","modified_gmt":"2021-10-01T13:24:18","slug":"premier-khan-says-talks-with-pakistani-taliban-underway","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.asiafreepress.com\/en\/asia\/paksitan\/premier-khan-says-talks-with-pakistani-taliban-underway\/","title":{"rendered":"Premier Khan says talks with Pakistani Taliban underway"},"content":{"rendered":"<figure class=\"wp-block-pullquote\"><blockquote><p>Pakistan&#8217;s prime minister says Afghan Taliban \u2018helping in a way as negotiations are taking place in Afghanistan\u2019<\/p><\/blockquote><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p>ISLAMABAD, Oct 1 (AA): Pakistan\u2019s prime minister on Friday revealed his government is in talks with some groups of Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) to persuade them to lay down arms and become normal citizens of the country.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>In an interview with Turkish broadcaster TRT World, Imran Khan said the talks are underway in Afghanistan.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cIn fact, I think some of the TTP groups actually want to talk to our government for peace, for some reconciliation, and we are in talks with some of the groups,\u201d Khan revealed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>He said there are many groups in the TTP and some of them want to talk and his government is talking to them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Responding to a question if the Afghan Taliban are helping his government in this process, Khan said &#8220;yes&#8221;.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cIn the sense that the talks are taking place in Afghanistan. In that sense yes,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The Pakistan premier said he does not believe in resolving issues through military operations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cI repeat, I do not believe in military solutions. I&#8217;m anti-military solutions. So, I always believe that political dialogue is the way ahead which was the case in Afghanistan,\u201d Khan said and hoped his government would reach a peace deal with the TTP groups.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cWe are talking. We might not reach some sort of conclusion in the end, a settlement, but we are talking,&#8221; Khan added.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Last month, Shah Mahmood Qureshi, the country&#8217;s foreign minister, also said that the Pakistani government would be open to giving pardons to the TTP members if they give up terrorist activities.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Pakistan has long been accusing a &#8220;nexus&#8221; of Indian and former Afghan intelligence agencies of patronizing the TTP and Baloch insurgents involved in cross-border attacks on its security forces.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The former Afghan government had denied the charges and itself accused Islamabad of patronizing the Taliban.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The TTP, an umbrella group of several militant outfits in Pakistan, was pushed to Afghanistan following a large-scale military onslaught in North Waziristan in 2014.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Last month, following the US troops\u2019 withdrawal from Afghanistan and the Taliban takeover of Kabul, a delegation led by the head of Pakistan&#8217;s premier spy agency \u2013 Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) \u2013 Lt. Gen. Faiz Hameed visited Kabul and met Taliban leadership.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Pakistan&#8217;s prime minister says Afghan Taliban \u2018helping in a way as negotiations are taking place in Afghanistan\u2019 ISLAMABAD, Oct 1 (AA): Pakistan\u2019s prime minister on Friday revealed his government is in talks with some groups of Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) to persuade them to lay down arms and become normal citizens of the country. In an [&hellip;]<\/p>","protected":false},"author":9,"featured_media":1185,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[396,82],"tags":[174,158,540,308,313,541,258],"class_list":["post-1184","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-latest","category-paksitan","tag-imran","tag-khan","tag-pakistani-taliban","tag-prime-minister","tag-talks","tag-trt","tag-ttp"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.asiafreepress.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1184"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.asiafreepress.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.asiafreepress.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.asiafreepress.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/9"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.asiafreepress.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1184"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.asiafreepress.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1184\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.asiafreepress.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1185"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.asiafreepress.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1184"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.asiafreepress.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1184"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.asiafreepress.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1184"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}