Taliban welcome new Pak PM’s offer of talks

KHAR: Pakistan’s Taliban movement on Sunday welcomed an offer by the country’s new premier to hold talks with militants but urged Islamabad to abandon the US-led ”war on terror.”
Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani said Saturday that fighting terrorism would be his top priority, but offered to hold talks with those militants who agree to surrender their weapons.
“We are ready to talk to all those people who give up arms and are ready to embrace peace,” Gilani said in an address to parliament, earning loud support from lawmakers.
Militant leader Maulvi Faqir Mohammad, addressing a rally of about 5,000 tribesmen and militants on Sunday in troubled Bajaur district on the Afghan border, welcomed Gilani’s offer -- with one condition.
“We are ready for talks with the government because a solution of all problems is possible through negotiations, but the government should quit its pro-America policies,” Mohammad said.
“Taliban are patriotic Pakistanis and their movement is not against the government.”
Mohammad is the leader of the Taliban movement in Bajaur and a deputy of Baitullah Mehsud, an Al-Qaeda linked militant commander based in the restive tribal area of South Waziristan.
The government has accused Mehsud of plotting the assassination of former premier Benazir Bhutto, who was killed in a gun and suicide attack on December 27 in Rawalpindi, a garrison city near Islamabad.
Pakistan has been a bulwark in the US-led fight against Al-Qaeda and Taliban militants since the September 11, 2001 attacks on the United States.
The country has suffered an unprecedented wave of violence including suicide bombings in the past year blamed on Al-Qaeda and Taliban militants.
Militants and local political leaders welcomed Gilani’s offer to abolish the colonial-era Frontier Crimes Regulation governing the tribal areas bordering Afghanistan -- but demanded that Islamic law be enforced in its place.
“Thousands of tribesmen were arbitrarily put in jails under this black law which was made by the colonial rulers a century ago,” said Munsif Khan, the president of the Mohmand tribal district branch of the Jamaat-e-Islami party.
“Under this law if a person committed crime, his entire family and tribe were punished,” he told AFP.