Peace dialogue: TTP accuses govt of dilly-dallying on demands

Intermediary appeals to Taliban, govt for permanent ceasefire.

PESHAWAR:

The Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan has said that it is a matter of concern that the government is dilly-dallying on its three key demands while the Taliban are seriously holding a ceasefire.

The TTP has called for the establishment of a ‘peace zone’, release of ‘non-combatant prisoners’ and an end to crackdown against Taliban members across the country, the group’s central spokesperson Shahidullah Shahid said in a two-page letter addressed to the media on Tuesday.

“We handed over a list of our non-combatant prisoners to the government [negotiating] committee but still no prisoner has been released while statements of government negotiators and senior officials on ‘peace zone’ show a lack of confidence among government departments,” he said.

Unabated action against TTP members – their arrests, torture in custody and mutilated bodies – has raised questions about the ceasefire, Shahid said, adding that the Taliban showed flexibility to provide an environment conducive for negotiation … but in response, the TTP has only received dead bodies, arrests and torture of its members.

Appeal for permanent truce

The coordinator of TTP’s intermediary committee, Maulana Yousaf Shah, appealed to both the Taliban and the government to extend the ceasefire for an indefinite period for fruitful dialogue.

He said the committee has succeeded in the first two phases of peace initiative – the coordination stage and the face-to-face meeting.

“The third phase involves practical steps, and the government has assured us that it’ll take practical steps,” Shah told The Express Tribune in Shabqadar where he attended a meeting of JUI-S organizing committee.

“In the last meeting, the government assured us that it’ll release Taliban non-combatants before the second round of face-to-face talks,” Shah said. “[But] the 19 prisoners the government freed didn’t figure on the list provided by the TTP. They were Mehsud tribesmen who were detained on suspicion and released by South Waziristan’s political agent.”

He said the Taliban have handed over a list of 765 non-combatant prisoners, hailing from tribal regions and Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa, were mostly relatives of the Taliban. Thirty of them have been cleared and might be released, he added. 

Published in The Express Tribune, April 9^th, 2014.