ISLAMABAD, May 23: President General Pervez Musharraf on Wednesday said that peace in Afghanistan would not come from the barrel of a gun and called for a multi-pronged strategy to tackle the situation.

The president, in an interview to Canadian national daily The Globe and Mail said: “We have to have a multi-pronged strategy. In Afghanistan it is only the military strategy which is working now.”

The president said: “Political element is the negotiations between warring factions. Who are the warring factions? Warring factions are the Afghan government and the coalition forces on one side and the militant Taliban and even non-Taliban ... so some form of negotiations (is needed) between these two.”

He said there might be groups who want to give up militancy and negotiate.

“So I can’t lay down whether you negotiate with the Taliban, but [if] they want to go on fighting, you don’t negotiate with them, take a military angle,” the president said.—APP