KARACHI: Muttahida Qaumi Movement leader Altaf Hussain has asked the army to seize power if the government does not support it in the fight against Taliban.

“I will request the army chief and the prime minister to be on the same page on dealing with terrorists…If the elected government does not join hands with the army against terrorists then, I would suggest, the military should step forward and assume power,” he said in a TV interview broadcast on Tuesday.

He said he did not care if people said that he was preferring dictatorship to democracy. “For us, the country is more important than democracy.” He said that Pakistan and Taliban could not coexist. “It is un-Islamic to support Taliban.”

Talks should be held with only those who recognised the state and the constitution and were willing to lay down arms, he said and called for an operation against those Taliban who did not want to abandon militancy.

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