JUI-F chief upbeat about US-Taliban talks

Fazlur Rehman says MMA may be restored, JI ‘the only hurdle’.

PESHAWAR:

Peace talks between the US and the Taliban are going to be successful, predicts chief of his faction of the Jamiat Ulema-Islam (JUI-F) Maulana Fazlur Rehman.

While talking to the media on Monday following a meeting of JUI-F’s provincial parliamentary party in Peshawar, the Maulana said his party agreed in principle with the negotiations as they are centred on withdrawal of foreign forces from Afghanistan and the release of Taliban prisoners from Guantanamo Bay.

The Maulana, however, added that the US was to blame for the bloodshed in Afghanistan and that the Americans should ‘confess’ to the killing of innocent civilians in the war-torn country.

The Maulana also questioned US President Barack Obama on what he termed his contradictory statements, including saying that the US had launched an offensive against the Taliban because they were terrorists – but now, was backtracking on the same term.

“If the Taliban are not terrorists, then why did the US announce a war on Afghanistan?” he asked.

About the current political situation in Pakistan and those who had boycotted the 2007 elections, the JUI-F chief said such actors should “not plot obstacles to derail the current democratic system,” adding that Senate elections would be held as scheduled whereas parliamentary elections would take place this year.

He said the JUI-F and other religious parties had reached an agreement to restore the defunct Mutahidda Majlis-e-Amal (MMA) but blamed Jamat-e-Islami (JI) for creating hurdles in the restoration of the religious alliance. He added that his party would try to convince JI to join the alliance but if they remained adamant, then “we have other options, like an MMA-minus JI”.

Published in The Express Tribune, February 7^th, 2012.