By Staff Reporter
ISLAMABAD: Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif has said the government will sit down again with the opposition Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) only if it ends a march on Islamabad, as a convoy led by a provincial chief minister pushed on through the north-west towards the capital to demand the release of the jailed former prime minister Imran Khan.
Speaking on Tuesday at the groundbreaking of the Kashmir Chowk underpass in Islamabad, Sharif said it was “unfortunate” that the “dreadful shadows” of long marches were hovering over the country again, despite efforts by his PML-N and its coalition partner, the PPP, to engage the PTI.
“End your long march. If you end it, then we will certainly sit with you and talk,” he said.
The offer came with a warning. Sharif said protests and sit-ins hurt exports, imports and manufacturing, and said the government would not allow the economy to be put “in shambles” or the lives of citizens put at risk. “The law will take its course,” he said.
The two parties held two days of talks in the chamber of the National Assembly speaker, Ayaz Sadiq, over the weekend. Sharif said there had been hope the “politics of confrontation” would end. He accused the PTI of demanding changes to terms that had already been settled, and of having only one purpose: ensuring the talks did not succeed.
He also appealed to the national interest. The government, he said, had brought macroeconomic stability and the time had come for growth, pointing to September gains in IT exports, remittances and industrial production. “If someone harms it, is it not equivalent to being an enemy of the country?” he asked.
“Merely Symbolic”
Khan’s party has dismissed an offer of talks from Prime Minister Sharif, as “merely symbolic”. Barrister Gohar Khan, the chairman of PTI, told journalists in Rawalpindi that no positive step had followed the invitation. He said the party had been denied access to its jailed founder for a year, the last meeting having taken place in October last year. “We have always stood with the state of Pakistan,” he said, adding that good intentions on the party’s part had not been matched by any willingness to let it consult its leader.
Gohar said the PTI had entered talks in good faith and sincerity but that the government had failed to show “generosity and seriousness”. None of the party’s demands, he said, was illegal. On terrorism, he said the PTI’s position was clear and called for implementation of the National Action Plan. Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP), he noted, was the province worst hit by militancy, and its assembly had unanimously passed a resolution on the issue.
Another one or two rounds could have moved the two sides towards a solution, he said, adding that, with the negotiations over, neither side should shift the blame to the other.
He also said Khan’s sisters, whom he described as non-political, had been taken into custody. On arriving at Adiala jail on Tuesday, he said, he had been told that Mr Khan’s cousin Qasim Zaman, who he said had never issued a political statement, had also been detained. There was no immediate official comment on either claim in the reports available.
The party’s secretary general, Salman Akram Raja, said that if the government wanted talks it should approach the opposition leadership: Mahmood Khan Achakzai, the leader of the opposition in the National Assembly, and Allama Raja Nasir Abbas, his counterpart in the Senate.
Speaking outside the Islamabad High Court, Raja said the march would continue “until something was finalised”. He rejected suggestions that matters had been settled at the table, insisting the opposition’s negotiating team had been given full authority to decide. Trouble began, he said, when the government planned operations in five KP districts without consultation. Khan, he said, had given Achakzai and Abbas full authority to negotiate, and it would be for them to decide whether to proceed.
Another PTI leader, Asad Qaiser, said in a video statement that the government should engage with the party over its “legitimate constitutional and legal demands”. Peaceful protest, he said, would remain the party’s constitutional right until those demands were met. He insisted the PTI’s protests were peaceful and would stay so, and that the law would not be taken into anyone’s hands.
Threats to impose governor’s rule would not solve anything, he said, and restricting the powers of the provincial government would damage the parliamentary system. “Pakistan comes first,” he said, calling on political forces to talk in the national interest.
Minister: “enough softness has been shown”
The harder line came from Tallal Chaudhry, the minister of state for interior, who told a press conference in Islamabad that further talks were conditional on the PTI calling off its marches and protests. He said “political and constitutional measures are in place” and that a “hardening of the state” was close.
“The state is like a mother, but it also has to act like a father at times,” he said, adding that “constitutional options are under discussion, but the political option comes first”.
Chaudhry gave the government’s account of how the negotiations unravelled. He said the interior minister, Mohsin Naqvi, opened by setting out Islamabad’s position on terrorism in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP), and that the PTI delegation returned the next day after consulting the province’s leadership in Peshawar. He said the chief minister, Sohail Afridi, had assured the centre that the delegation could bind the provincial government, and that the PTI had agreed “100 per cent” with the federal position on terrorism.
A draft agreement, he said, was ready by 9pm on the second day, and Mr Naqvi was preparing to take it to President Asif Ali Zardari. Then, he said, the PTI team retired to a separate room to consult Afridi. “When they came out, they couldn’t look us in the eye and asked for permission to leave,” Chaudhry said.
He also questioned why the PTI objected to a counterterrorism plan when the second National Action Plan was agreed during Khan’s own time in office. Claiming that the PTI’s leaders and workers were safe in a province that was unsafe for everyone else, he asked why militants had a “soft corner” for the party. On the march itself, he said the PTI could not take over a country of 260 million by bringing tens of thousands of people to the capital, and predicted that after this episode “a march won’t happen again”.
Two versions of the deadlock
The PTI tells a different story. The party said the government refused to make access to Khan part of any agreement, even after the PTI offered to drop other demands in exchange for a meeting with him. It also said the two sides disagreed over KP. According to the PTI, Islamabad asked the provincial government to back its counterterrorism measures and emergency steps in the merged tribal districts within 72 hours. The party proposed instead that representatives of both governments meet within 72 hours to agree a joint strategy.
Naqvi accused Afridi of “sabotaging” the negotiations. The interior minister also met the KP governor, Faisal Karim Kundi, amid talk of imminent governor’s rule in the province. A government source told Dawn that Islamabad was seriously considering it, and a member of the government’s negotiating team, Muqam, said on Monday that the conditions for governor’s rule had been met. The prime minister’s political adviser, Rana Sanaullah, said on Monday that talks could resume if the opposition gave assurances of progress on counterterrorism in KP.
Afridi launched the march on Sunday from Gandi Chowk in Lakki Marwat, arriving by helicopter, and said the party would not accept any policy that harmed the people of the province. The PTI had earlier postponed the march from 27 September to 4 October.
By Tuesday, the third day of the march, party workers had spent the night at Lachi Cricket Ground in Kohat, and the convoy was preparing to resume its journey towards Peshawar. Afridi was due to address supporters at University Chowk, with a halt planned for the night at Matani Chowk. All caravans are due to gather at Khairabad on 8 October, where Afridi has said the next stage will be announced.
The federal government has said marchers will not be allowed into Islamabad under any circumstances, and about 1,200 containers remain in the capital. Previous marches have ended badly. A November 2024 march on Islamabad ended in deadly clashes with security forces; the PTI says this protest will be peaceful. Khan denies wrongdoing, and his party says the cases against him are politically motivated.
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