No progress in talks sans meeting with Imran: Salman Akram

Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) Secretary General Salman Akram Raja said on Monday that negotiations with the government had failed over the party’s demand for access to its founder, Imran Khan, saying no progress could be made without meeting him. “We have two major demands. One is that we should be allowed to meet the PTI founder,” Raja said while addressing a press conference alongside other party leaders, adding that PTI would not make any decision without Imran. Raja said there had been no agreement to include Imran’s personal physician, Dr Faisal Sultan, in the panel. “These were important issues. How could the negotiations have succeeded without them?” he said. He said meetings between Imran and his family and personal physician, along with the issue of terrorism in K-P, remained important to the party. “All parties are concerned about the PTI founder’s health,” Raja said. Raja said the party wanted peace and order to be maintained in the country and had not closed the door to negotiations, but two rounds of talks had ended without an agreement. He said the party had also sought a consensus-based approach to addressing terrorism in K-P, where a peace jirga had brought together representatives of political parties and tribal elders to discuss solutions to problems in the tribal areas. “Decisions cannot be made from a distance. How can the situation there improve in that way?” he said. He said the government had not accepted PTI’s demand for consultation with all stakeholders, despite discussions during the negotiations that decisions concerning the tribal areas would be taken through consensus. Read: Afridi-led PTI convoy to head towards Kohat after overnight stay in Karak PTI stood by K-P Chief Minister Sohail Afridi’s position, he said, adding that decisions concerning the province should be made after consultation with all stakeholders. “We can all work together to take the country towards stability,” Raja said. He said that CM Afridi launched the long march after the negotiations failed. “On the day of the negotiations, I said that my daughters and I would come out, carrying flowers in our hands, not Kalashnikovs, we are not armed people. We still say that distances should not be created from closeness,” he added. Raja said the two sides had been close to resolving the issues during the negotiations, but "suddenly that closeness was turned into distance." He said the government committee had refused to provide access to personal physicians and had declined to work on a mutually agreed course of action. “Then what are we supposed to do?” he said. Raja said PTI would continue to come out for “love, respect, the rule of law and the Constitution, and peace”. Talks end in deadlock The government and PTI began negotiations on Friday in an attempt to defuse tensions over the party’s planned October 4 long march. The government wanted PTI to call off the march, while the opposition sought political consensus on its demands and maintained that the protest would proceed unless its concerns were addressed. The two sides held a second round of talks on Saturday under National Assembly Speaker Ayaz Sadiq. The negotiations continued for several hours, with the parties initially agreeing on a five-point framework that included legal facilities for PTI founder Imran and his wife, an early hearing of pending cases, and meetings with their lawyers and family members. The talks, however, ran into a deadlock over provisions concerning counter-terrorism operations in Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa. The negotiations eventually ended without an agreement in the early hours of Sunday, leaving the government and opposition at an impasse and paving the way for PTI to proceed with the first phase of its long march from K-P. Read more: Naqvi blames K-P CM for talks ‘collapse’, warns Afridi will ‘be responsible’ if anyone dies during march Interior Minister Mohsin Naqvi said the provincial government had backed away from commitments during the final stage of negotiations, including cooperation with the Centre on counter-terrorism measures, operations in the merged districts and implementation of the National Action Plan. PPP leader Sherry Rehman, who was part of the government negotiating team, said the talks collapsed after the K-P government refused to sign a draft that had already been agreed upon by the negotiating teams. PTI, however, said the main obstacles were access to Imran and disagreement over how counter-terrorism operations should be conducted in K-P. The party said it wanted Imran to be consulted before any decision was taken to call off the long march and sought the involvement of the provincial government and political parties in framing a joint strategy against terrorism. Raja said the federal government wanted the provincial government to endorse actions and operations initiated by the Centre, while PTI insisted that such measures should be agreed upon through consultation. The party also said the government had declined its demand for immediate access to Imran, which it described as the principal point of deadlock.