ISLAMABAD: Dialogue between the Pakistan Awami Tehreek (PAT) and the government remained suspended for the second consecutive day on Friday.

“It has been two days and we haven’t heard from the government about the acceptance of our demands,” a member of the PAT negotiating team said on Friday.

Talks between the PAT and government had been revived on Wednesday through an initiative of a jirga comprising opposition parties.

Since the first round there has been no direct contact between the two sides, though on Thursday members of the jirga had instituted a step-by-step procedure through which they planned to deal with the issue.

Under the agreed process, the government side was expected to provide its written response to PAT’s demands.

PAT has a 10-point charter of demand, which calls for resignation of Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif and Punjab Chief Minister Shahbaz Sharif and lists an elaborate set of social reforms.

PAT has made Shahbaz Sharif’s resignation on allegations of involvement in the Model Town firing incident as their basic demand for negotiations to progress.

The government reply hasn’t reached us as yet, the PAT negotiator said.

Published in Dawn, September 6th, 2014