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ISLAMABAD: Pakistan Peoples Party Senator Raza Rabbani has called for revisiting the policy of engagement with the banned Tehreek-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) and reviewing the seven-year-old National Action Plan (NAP) against terrorism.
Talking to Dawn on Thursday, the former Senate chairman suggested that the new action plan should be prepared by the Parliamentary Committee on National Security (PCNS) having representation of all stakeholders, reminding that a similar committee had been constituted in 2012 after the US military operation in Abbottabad in which top Al Qaeda leader Osama Bin Laden had been killed.
The demands from the PPP senator came a day after Defence Minister Khawaja Asif, while speaking on the floor of the National Assembly, expressed his apprehensions at the success of talks with the TTP and admitted that anti-Taliban feelings were growing in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa as people were holding protest demonstrations in various parts of the province against the Taliban presence in their area.
Mr Rabbani also condemned the increase in terrorist attacks in KP resulting in the martyrdom of the personnel of law enforcement agencies and the armed forces.
“These attacks suggest the need to revisit NAP as also the policy of engagement with the TTP as it also no longer seems to have a unified command,” said Mr Rabbani.
The PPP senator suggested that the policy should be formulated in consultation with all stakeholders from the platform of a PCNS and then should be implemented after its approval from the joint sitting of the parliament. Moreover, he said its implementation should also be monitored by the committee and it should present a report on the state of implementation every three months to both the houses of the parliament.
He also proposed that the Rules of the Parliamentary Committee should be amended and instead of the National Assembly speaker, the chairman of the committee should be from the Senate as this matter related to the federation.
Published in Dawn, August 12th, 2022
