Government Offers Opposition Counterterrorism Talks as Rana Sanaullah Says the Prime Minister Is Ready to Invite All Parties

ISLAMABAD: The federal government has extended the offer again. Speaking in the Senate on Tuesday, Rana Sanaullah, the prime minister’s adviser on political affairs, said Shehbaz Sharif was still ready to invite every party to sit down and talk about one thing — counterterrorism talks that could put the whole country behind the fight against militancy. Set the other demands aside, was the message, and stand together on this.

Which operation did he hold up as the model?

Sanaullah reached back to Operation Zarb-e-Azb, which, he reminded the house, was launched only after a national consensus had been built. Pakistan is facing terrorism again, he said, and the real question is how the entire nation supports the operations now under way. He expressed grief over an army officer martyred a day earlier and told the opposition that a campaign against the military’s leadership, with what he called below-the-belt remarks, was no national service.

Why were the opposition leaders singled out?

Much of the speech was aimed at National Assembly Opposition Leader Mehmood Khan Achakzai. He became opposition leader on the speaker’s signature, Sanaullah said, yet he does not accept the speaker, will not visit his chamber and will not meet the prime minister there. Senate Opposition Leader Raja Nasir Abbas had turned down the same suggestions, he added — a meeting with the prime minister, or a sitting in the speaker’s office; both were declined.

Why compare Khyber Pakhtunkhwa with Balochistan?

Because, in Sanaullah’s telling, one province cooperated and the other did not. Balochistan’s government, he said, works fully with the armed forces and the federation. The now-removed KP government, by contrast, stayed away from apex committee meetings — in 11 months its chief minister attended just one — while deposed chief minister Sohail Afridi kept saying he would not allow an operation in the province. The offer lands in a charged moment: the Centre imposed emergency and governor’s rule in KP on October 11, and Parliament endorsed both last week over opposition protests.