ISLAMABAD:
Federal Minister for Parliamentary Affairs Dr Tariq Fazal Chaudhry on Saturday informed the Senate that Pakistan remains committed to resolving all issues through dialogue with Afghanistan.
However, he said Pak-Afghan negotiations faced delays due to non-provision of written guarantees from Afghanistan.
Responding to the points raised by Mashal Azam in the Senate, he said the government fully supports the ongoing peace talks between Pakistan and Afghanistan. “This government has always believed that all outstanding issues with Afghanistan should be resolved through negotiation,” he stressed.
However, he said that despite the Taliban regime’s verbal acknowledgments of the presence of TTP safehouses, the refusal to provide written assurances had led to the current impasse in the talks.
Chaudhry said Pakistan would continue to use diplomatic channels to achieve lasting peace and stability in the region.
On Saturday, the Taliban regime maintained its ceasefire with Pakistan, even though their latest negotiations failed. The two sides met in Türkiye on Thursday to finalize a truce agreed on October 19 in Qatar, following deadly clashes between the South Asian neighbors.
Both have remained tight-lipped about the content of the discussions, which are known to have only addressed long-standing security issues.
In a subsequent press conference, Moudjahid stressed that the ceasefire would “hold.” “There is no problem with the previously agreed ceasefire with Pakistan, it will be respected,” he said. Neither Islamabad nor the mediators immediately commented on the news that the talks had failed.
Information Minister Attaullah Tarar previously suggested that negotiations in Turkey were failing, saying it was up to Afghanistan to fulfill its commitments to suppress terrorism, “which they have so far failed to do.” “Pakistan will continue to exercise all necessary options to safeguard the security of its people and its sovereignty,” he wrote.
Referring to a precedent from 2018, when Nawaz Sharif had signed tickets for the Senate elections as president of the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N), he said the Supreme Court of Pakistan had subsequently ruled that a convicted person cannot issue tickets for a party, leading to cancellation of such nominations and election of candidates as independent members.
He said it was therefore misleading and undemocratic to claim that constitutional amendments could only be undertaken with the consent of a convicted person. “The power to amend the Constitution rests only with Parliament – the Senate and the National Assembly – by a two-thirds majority,” he said.
