Islamabad - Our Special Correspondent: Pakistan Prime Minister Dr Mian Muhammad Nawaz Sharif has rather excitedly announced that the government would be negotiating with the hitherto unknown United Baloch Army (UBA) that had claimed responsibility for the bomb blast in Islamabad on Wednesday. Speaking exclusively to Khabaristan Today, Nawaz said that negotiating with terrorists who kill innocent Pakistanis is an integral part of the current ruling party’s manifesto and that there was no reason why the government would want to change that for Baloch terrorists.
“It is only logical that we have decided to negotiate with the United Baloch Army – who I had not heard of until earlier this week – because that falls in line with our counter terrorism policy,” Nawaz told Khabaristan Today. “I mean it is impossible to count the number of blasts that the TTP have orchestrated, but we always negotiate with them, don’t we? Baloch separatists deserve the same,” he added.
Claiming that no self-respecting government would have one rule for a group of miscreants and completely different for another, the prime minister then went on to add that ostensible religiosity should not be factored in while dealing with anti-state elements. “If we were to immediately launch operations against the UBA, while we are sitting on the negotiation table with the TTP, one would assume that we have bowed down to TTP’s peddled religiosity. And that just because TTP have claimed that their actions are Islamic – something that the UBA of course has not iterated – we are giving them all the leeway in the world,” Nawaz said.
He further added that the establishment’s contrasting stance regarding the Taliban and Baloch separatists also needed to be rebuffed, and that the best way of doing so would be to treat them equally. “We will soon release Baloch separatists as a token of goodwill as well,” Nawaz concluded.
Interior Minister Chaudhry Nisar Ali Khan meanwhile breathed a very loud sigh of relief when approached by our correspondent with questions related to the blast. “I am just glad that someone else took responsibility for it and Thank Allah Almighty, the Most Beneficent, Most Merciful, that the TTP condemned the bombing. With the timing so suspicious, had no one showed up, I might have had to take the responsibility for the blast myself,” Nisar said.
Source: Pakistan Today
Tags:
News