Summary PM Nawaz Sharif vowed to give "peaceful solution one more chance".
(Web Desk) - Prime Minister Muhammad Nawaz Sharif today (Friday) directed the 4-member dialogue committee to immediately start the dialogue process with the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP).
Talking to the members of the dialogue committee in Islamabad‚ he expressed the desire to achieve the objective of peace through negotiations.
The Prime Minister said the dialogue committee is fully empowered in the dialogue process and directed the Interior Minister Chaudhry Nisar Ali Khan to provide the required information and resources to the committee.
He said the committee should immediately establish contacts with those groups willing to hold talks.
The dialogue committee comprises of Irfan Siddiqui and Rahimullah Yousafzai, two senior journalists; retired Major Muhammad Amir, a former intelligence operative; and Rustum Shah Mohmand, a former Pakistani ambassador to Afghanistan.
Nawaz Sharif s PML-N-led government was elected on a campaign promise of bringing peace to the violence-wracked country through negotiations with the Taliban, and has doggedly stuck to this line since being elected in May 2013.
Since then, violence related to armed groups has claimed at least 1,561 civilian lives in Pakistan, most of them in attacks claimed by the TTP or its allies.
In January of this year alone, at least 92 people have been killed in attacks linked to the TTP and its allied groups, including at least 20 soldiers in an attack on a military convoy in Bannu , and 13 people in an attack near the Pakistan army’s headquarters in Rawalpindi.
Those attacks prompted the military to launch air strikes against targets near Mir Ali, a bastion of the TTP in the North Waziristan tribal area. The air strikes were seen by many as a precursor to the launching of a more widespread military operation against the Taliban, but on Wednesday Sharif stuck to the government’s policy, which has so far remained unsuccessful in even establishing formal contact with the TTP.
