SWABI: Jamiat Ulema-i-Islam-Fazl chief Maulana Fazlur Rehman has showed reservations over the proposed security policy of the federal government, saying it is aimed at targeting religious seminaries.

Talking to journalists here on Wednesday, he said that his party had chalked out a plan to hold public meetings against the security policy.

The JUI-F chief visited the residence of his classmate Hafiz Mohammad Ibrahim Fani, who died on Feb 25. He offered fateha for the departed soul of his classmate, who studied with him for eight years.

It was the first time that Maulana Fazl, whose party is also part of the federal government, issued a statement about the security policy. “We oppose the government tactics to target the religious institutions and harmed their sanctity,” he said.

The JUI-F chief said that first public meeting against the security policy would be organised in Multan on March 20.

He said that the second meeting would be held in Peshawar on March 27. He added that they had planned to hold a public meeting in Karachi.

“The series of public meetings against the government’s security policy will continue. Our first and foremost duty is to protect the seminaries and educate people about their importance,” Maulana Fazl said.

To a question, he said that he did not predict that talks between the committees nominated by government and Tehreek-i-Taliban Pakistan would end insurgency in the country completely.

“The mechanism, which should be adopted by the government for negotiations, has not been owned by it. This created confusion. That’s why we said that the talks would not achieve objectives,” he said.

The JUI-F chief said that he was not in favour of holding talks with few factions of Taliban and leaving others, who could declare tomorrow that they were not part of the peaceful settlement. It would spoil the outcomes of parleys, he added.

Maulana Fazl said that there was no mechanism under which the talks could be held. Criticising the establishment, he alleged it failed to understand the delicacy of the critical scenario in the country.

However, he did not suggest how negotiations could be held with Taliban and how terrorism could be controlled.

“The war against terrorism had already caused Rs80 billion losses to economy of the country. In addition, over 50,000 people mostly civilians had been killed but despite that we failed to come out of this unjust war,” he said.

The JUI-F chief said that parliament had already called on the government to distance itself with the war against terrorism. He said that the unanimous resolution of the parliament in that regard had not been implemented owing to unknown reasons.

Maulana Fazl said that American forces would not withdraw from the war-ravaged Afghanistan. “Under a treaty, the Americans wanted to stay in Afghanistan after 2014,” he said.

It was the right of Afghan leaders whether they wanted to ink a treaty with the US or not, the JUI-F chief said.