The government and Pakistan Tehrik-e-Insaf (PTI) restarted their stalled dialogue process yesterday after a hiatus of two months with both sides announcing that they will hold the second round of talks on Tuesday-a day after PTI's lockdown of Lahore. Speaking to media persons after their meeting, Jahangir Tareen of PTI said that negotiations are the only solution to end the on-going stalemate. He said both sides have exchanged their papers in relation to terms of reference and that they will meet on Tuesday to hold deliberations.
He said the issue of formation of a judicial commission also came under discussion. Representing the government side, Finance Minister Ishaq Dar said that "ice has melted and we will try our level best to resolve the issue through dialogue". According to him, the government will make its utmost efforts to bring to an end the protracted protest sit-in with a view to insulting the economy against any further harm.
Answering a question, he said that leadership of both sides decided to make details of the dialogue public after their conclusion.
Answering another question, Dar said the PML-N leadership has issued instructions to his party workers to remain peaceful and avoid any untoward incident during shutdown call of PTI in Lahore today (Monday). He said that PTI leadership should also give instructions to his workers to remain peaceful.
In response to remarks of Dar, Tareen said that PTI protests always remain peaceful and the protest in Karachi is a strong case in point.
Answering to yet another question, he said that in even of any major breakthrough in Tuesday's meeting, his party could take countrywide countdown call forward. Dar said that leaderships from both sides should avoid passing provocative remarks against each other.
Federal Minister for Planning, Development and Reforms Ahsan Iqbal said that we have seen much of confrontational politics in the past and hope that the nature of politics will be "moderate and lenient".
Assad Umar said that the PML-N government is running advertisements against PTI but it is the responsibility of the leadership to make decisions for the betterment of people.
Comments
Comments are closed.