ISLAMABAD: Chief of his own faction of the Jamiat Ulema-i-Islam (JUI-F) Maulana Fazlur Rehman has termed the present situation in North Waziristan a result of the government’s “flawed strategy”.

“The unfortunate situation in Waziristan is the outcome of the government’s flawed talks strategy and the government will have to acknowledge that its mechanism was a failure,” the JUI-F chief said in a statement issued here on Thursday.

“The people of Pakistan are in the dark whether or not a new operation has been launched and are wondering if the talks are already dead,” the Maulana said while commenting on the air strikes in North Waziristan on Wednesday in which more than 60 militants had reportedly been killed.

The statement from the JUI-F chief came a day after two nationalist parties — the Awami National Party (ANP) and Balochistan National Party-A (BNP-A) — demanded of the government to convene a joint session of parliament to discuss the security situation.

Speaking in the Senate, ANP’s Afrasiab Khattak expressed surprise over the reports of air strikes in Waziristan at a time when the government was claiming that the talks process had not been over yet.

Leader of the Opposition in National Assembly Syed Khursheed Ahmed Shah of the PPP while talking to reporters on Thursday criticised the government for not taking political parties and the parliament into confidence over the issue of talks with the outlawed Tehreek-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP). He was of the view that the government should not delay any of its decisions regarding the dialogue or the military operation.

In his statement Maulana Fazlur Rehman once again complained that the JUI-F had never been taken into confidence on the talks issue. “Where are the committees (formed by the government and the Taliban for talks)? Why the parliament is not being taken into confidence? Why the coalition partners are not being briefed?

“We want answers from the government and it should come clean on the state of the dialogue,” he said. The JUI-F chief claimed that his party knew that the government was not serious in holding talks as this was reflected in its choice of a “weak mechanism”. He criticised the government for including bureaucrats in its committee tasked to hold talks with the militants.

He said only one session of direct talks was held with the militants. It seemed that the PML-N had simply wasted time on dialogue to pave way for a military operation, he added.

Published in Dawn, May 23rd, 2014