PESHAWAR:
Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) on Tuesday insisted they were still at war with government troops because peace talks had yet to start and the military was still launching multiple offensives against them.
The announcement came two days after senior military officers were killed by a Taliban bomb in the Upper Dir district of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa.
“War is continuing, it was started by the government and they will have to stop it,” TTP spokesman Shahidullah Shahid told AFP on Tuesday from an undisclosed location.
Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif has called for peace talks and last week won backing from main political parties.
But hopes that the talks would go ahead were dealt a blow when a Taliban bomb on Sunday killed three soldiers including a major-general.
Analysts said the attack endangered the proposed peace talks with the insurgent group.
Chief of the Army Staff General Ashfaq Kayani on Monday said militants would not be allowed to take advantage of the peace talks offer.
But the Taliban said that they would carry out more attacks because peace talks had yet to be officially proposed.
“No one has contacted us for peace talks, not even a tribal jirga has approached us. If they (government) want to end this war, they will have to announce a ceasefire,” Shahid said. The Taliban on Sunday announced preconditions for talks on ending the insurgency, demanding that troops withdraw from tribal areas and that prisoners are freed.
Pakistan’s military insisted they would not let Taliban set conditions for peace talks. When the TTP spokesman was asked about his group’s future plans after the attack which killed the officers, he said: “We will never miss any opportunity to attack the army like that.”
Published in The Express Tribune, September 18th, 2013.
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