PESHAWAR: Awami National Party president Asfandyar Wali Khan has asked Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf chairman Imran to accept the mandate of Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif.

“We accept the PTI government in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, therefore, wants it to stop fight for power with the Centre and wait till next elections,” he told a news conference after meeting of ANP working council at a local hotel here on Thursday.

Mr Khan said that internally displaced persons, who faced plethora of problems in the province, were ignored owing to power tussle. The displaced people required immediate attention, he said, adding that they had left their homes for the sake of peace in the region.

“While in the government, we dealt with displaced people from Malakand and tribal areas more appropriately because we considered it our duty to provide basic facilities to them. The government should follow the modus operandi employed by the ANP to help the people and ensure their early return to the ancestral places,” he said.

Mr Khan said that ANP would be the first party to oppose any unconstitutional step in the country. Terming Imran Khan’s demand for resignation of an elected prime minister unlawful and extra constitutional, he asked the PTI chief to concentrate on Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and prepare for next elections.

However, he said that they would support any move aimed at paving way for by-election in the country. He also criticised PTI for not fulfilling its promises of bringing change in the province and said that electorates in the provinces were being ignored. He said that it was legal right of PTI chairman Imran Khan to hold sit-in for the fulfillment of his demands.

The ANP chief said that good relations between Pakistan and neighbouring Afghanistan were mandatory for regional peace and doing away with menace of terrorism. The neighbouring countries should cooperate to be able to make progress and defeat militancy and terrorism in all its forms, he said.

Mr Khan said that ANP upheld norms of democracy in the country and opposed unparliamentarily interventions and would thread the same path in future. The party, he said, had lost hundreds of its leaders and workers to terrorists in its effort to establish peace in the province.

Mr Khan said that development work carried out by ANP in the province couldn’t be matched with the progress they made during the past 60 years. “Despite facing the daunting task of coping with soaring terrorism, our government made new institutions like universities, colleges and schools to benefit the masses,” he said.

The ANP chief said that the recommendations of the jirga convened by the party regarding the situation of displaced persons would be sent to the prime minister with request to extend assistance to the people, who had left their homes, properties and business for restoration of peace in the whole region.

Published in Dawn, November 21st, 2014