Skip to main content

Bilawal Bhutto's Party Says Willing To Talk With Jailed Imran Khan

The Pakistan Peoples Party-led by Bilawal Bhutto Zardari has said that it is ready to talk with jailed former prime minister Imran Khan if the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf founder is willing to engage, amidst heightened political instability in the cash-strapped country.

"It is being said that the PTI founder is ready to talk. If Imran Khan is ready to talk then that's a positive thing," Senior PPP leader Khurshid Shah said while speaking to the media in Quetta, the provincial capital of Balochistan.

Mr Shah welcomed the possibility of talks as a positive development.

"President Asif Ali Zardari has always tried to solve problems through negotiations, and the PPP would play its role if needed," Mr Shah was quoted as saying by the Express Tribune newspaper.

The PPP's willingness to engage with Khan's party comes amidst heightened political instability, following the PTI's hard-line stance against the incumbent Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) led government.

The PPP, along with the Muttahida Qaumi Movement-Pakistan (MQM-P) and other allies, supports the PML-N of Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif. The two former rivals recently witnessed a war of words. The ruling PML-N accepted all the demands of PPP over the federal budget and allocation of development funds.

Since Mr Khan's ouster through a vote of no confidence in 2022, the PTI has maintained a strong opposition to the PPP-PML-N alliance.

Political tensions increased after the February 8 elections, which saw the two parties forming a coalition government in the Centre.

Calls for reconciliation have been growing from various societal and political quarters, urging the PTI to negotiate with the government.

Mr Khan's party had previously rejected talks with what it termed the "Form-47 government," instead showing a preference for dialogue with the military establishment.

In April, PTI's Shehryar Afridi indicated a preference for negotiations with Army chief Gen Asim Munir and the Director General of Inter-Services Intelligence (DG ISI).

Subsequently, PTI Secretary General Omar Ayub mentioned that Imran Khan had assigned significant responsibility to former President Dr Arif Alvi.

Last month, PTI Chairman Barrister Gohar confirmed that Mr Khan had approved discussions with the government.

Similarly, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Chief Minister Ali Amin Gandapur and Khan's sister Aleema Khan called for state institutions to remain neutral for the country's progress.

Meanwhile, the government too has called on the Khan-founded party to come to the table and hold talks.

"If you want to remove us then do it. You don't want to resolve issues but to further complicate them. You should do talks instead of destroying everything," Federal Minister for Petroleum Dr Musadik Malik said last week.

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)



from NDTV News-World-news https://ift.tt/pRXTQfu

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

US Issues $25-Million Bounty On Venezuela President On Day Of His Oath

Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, whose nearly 12 years in office have been marked by deep economic and social crisis, was sworn in for a third term on Friday, despite a six-month-long election dispute, international calls for him to stand aside and an increase in the US reward offered for his capture. Maduro, president since 2013, was declared the winner of July's election by both Venezuela's electoral authority and top court, though detailed tallies confirming his victory have never been published. Venezuela's opposition says ballot box-level tallies show a landslide win for its former candidate Edmundo Gonzalez, who is recognized as president-elect by several countries including the United States. International election observers said the vote was not democratic. The months since the election have seen Gonzalez's flight to Spain in September, his ally Maria Corina Machado going into hiding in Venezuela, and the detentions of high-profile opposition figures and ...
Post a Comment
Read more

It's Official, Kamala Harris Is Democratic Candidate For US Election

US Vice President Kamala Harris effectively secured the Democratic party's presidential nomination Friday, confirming her remarkable rise to party standard bearer in November's showdown against Republican Donald Trump. Kamala Harris was the sole candidate on the ballot for a five-day electronic vote of nearly 4,000 party convention delegates. She will be officially crowned at a Chicago convention later this month. "I am honored to be the presumptive Democratic nominee for President of the United States," Kamala Harris, 59, said on a phone-in to a party celebration after securing enough votes by the second day of the marathon vote. In the two weeks since President Joe Biden ended his reelection bid, Kamala Harris has gained full control of the party. No other Democrats stepped forward to challenge her elevation to the top of the ticket, making her confirmation as the first Black and South Asian woman ever to secure a major party's nomination a formality. The a...
Post a Comment
Read more

All You Need To Know About Donald Trump's 1st Criminal Trial

Donald Trump goes on trial Monday for allegedly covering up hush money payments to hide affairs ahead of the 2016 presidential election which propelled him into the White House. He will become the first former US president to go on criminal trial when jury selection begins next week. Here are the key questions ahead of the landmark trial: What is Trump accused of? As Trump closed in on victory in the 2016 presidential election, adult film star Stormy Daniels was paid $130,000 to keep quiet about an alleged 2006 sexual tryst with Trump. The payments, made by Trump's lawyer at the time, Michael Cohen, were revealed by The Wall Street Journal in January 2018. Prosecutors have seized on the concealment of the payments as "legal fees" in the Trump Organization's accounts when Cohen was reimbursed as the heart of their case. Prosecutors say Trump "concealed the reason for these payments... which clearly were paid in order to influence voters," former prosec...
Post a Comment
Read more