Pakistan Needs To Talk With TTP From 'Position Of Strength': Speakers.

ISLAMABAD -- The speakers at a consultation unanimously viewed that Pakistan needs to be 'assertive' and should negotiate with outlawed Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) from the 'position of strength.'

Most participants were critical of the demand of proscribed TTP about reversal of Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA)'s merger with Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP). They said that Pakistan should only talk to the group on the terms of surrender.

The lawmakers, academicians, former diplomats, retired army officers, journalists, and experts on security, and Afghan affairs participated in the discussion on 'Afghan peace and reconciliation: Pakistan's interests and policy options' organised by Islamabad-based Pak Institute for Peace Studies (PIPS).

The main themes of the consultation include 'The TTP's indefinite ceasefire and the role of the Taliban' and 'can the Taliban deliver on governance, security, and intra-Afghan reconciliation?'

The speakers had divergent views about any outcome of Pakistan's ongoing talks with the banned group and the majority was not optimistic that Pakistan could either succeed to seal any peace deal with the TTP or any agreement would last longer even if signed. Many questioned the composition of the Jirga that held talks with the group and argued that expectations of Pakistan were wrong that the Afghan Taliban would use their influence on the TTP to sign a peace deal with it.

In the first week of June, the banned TTP had formally announced an indefinite ceasefire with Pakistan following two days of talks with a grand tribal Jirga in Kabul. The group has set a major condition of reversal of FATA's merger with KP to cut any peace deal with Pakistan.

Former Defence Secretary Lt Gen (retd) Nadeem Khalid Lodhi, while opening the debate, said that the option of Jirga to negotiate with the militant group could work because it had the support of the government as well as the military establishment and Afghan Taliban were mediators of these talks. 'There are chances of some breakthrough.' He rejected the notion that the TTP and the Afghan Taliban were two sides of the same coin.

National Party president and former Balochistan chief minister Dr Abdul Malik Baloch called for adopting the policy of co-existence and urged that Pakistan would have to revisit its internal and external policies to attain peace in Balochistan and the entire country. He said, 'We need to make the parliament powerful to debate and decide on matters (of...