Will urge party to call off Faisalabad protest if talks with govt start by Dec 6: Qureshi

Ishaq Dar says if the protest is deferred, govt would start the dialogue process by Dec 6 or 7

ISLAMABAD: A day after the government announced its intentions to revive the stalled dialogue process with the protesting opposition party, Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) Vice Chairman Shah Mehmood Qureshi on Tuesday showed willingness to defer his party’s shutter down protest in Faisalabad on December 8 if talks start by then, Express News reported.

While talking to Express News's Javed Chaudhry during the programme Kal Tak on Tuesday, Qureshi said that if talks resume by December 6, he could request PTI Chairman Imran Khan to call off the party’s scheduled shutter down protest in Faisalabad.

“If [Ishaq] Dar sb, after speaking with the prime minister, assures us [PTI] that the government is ready to initiate negotiations by December 6, I will try persuading my party to call off the protest,” Qureshi said.

Finance Minister Ishaq Dar who spreaheaded talks with PTI until August 31, agreed that if PTI’s protest is deferred, the government would surely start the dialogue process by December 6 or 7.

“I am ready to go an extra mile for this, and will reach out to the prime minister..,” the senior Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) leader said during the programme.

Imran had unvieled his much-talked-about ‘Plan-C’ at the party's rally on Sunday, November 30.

He had threatened to lockdown Lahore, Faislabad and Karachi, followed by a countrywide shutdown on December 16 if his longstanding demand for an independent audit of the May 2013 elections was not accepted.