Pakistan’s Foreign Minister Bilawal Bhutto-Zardari on Wednesday criticized the former Imran Jan-led government’s policy of «appeasement» with the armed group Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), known as the Pakistani Taliban.
Bhutto-Zardari has indicated in an interview to the Qatari television channel Al Jazira that this «wrong» policy has been negative for the country and has guaranteed that the new Executive has changed its position towards the group.
He stressed that the authorities «will not tolerate» the activities of the group, which in November announced the end of the cease-fire, agreed within the framework of a process of talks mediated by the Afghan Taliban, and resumed its attacks, as reported by the Pakistani television channel Geo TV.
The minister further stated that «the solution is to interact with the Afghan government and try to convince them to fulfill their promises to the international community, whether on women’s rights or on terrorism issues».
On the other hand, security forces killed four suspected terrorists during an operation in the city of Hoshab, located in the province of Baluchistan, as reported by the Pakistani newspaper ‘Dawn’.
Islamabad has denounced that the TTP uses Afghan territory for its attacks and has even threatened cross-border operations, something firmly rejected by Kabul.
The TTP, which differs from the Afghan Taliban in organizational matters but follows the same rigorist interpretation of Sunni Islam, brings together more than a dozen Islamist militant groups operating in Pakistan, where they have killed some 70,000 people in two decades of violence.
Source: (EUROPA PRESS)
