Siraj ul Haq supports Taliban’s demands

Lahore: Ameer, Jamaat e Islami, Pakistan, Sirajul Haq, has said that if the government did not want more bloodshed, it should give serious consideration to the Taliban’s demands.

Addressing a press conference at Mansoora after Friday prayers, he said  the Taliban were simply demanding a Peace Zone for talks where there was no danger of attack and the release of about three hundred people not involved in militancy. He said, personally, he believed there was no harm in accepting these demands if the country was to be freed from terrorism.

Sirajul Haq urged all political parties to rise above politics and selfish interests in order to restore peace in the country, because if there was no peace,  the economy could not improve and the yoke of the IMF and World Bank’s slavery could not be thrown off.

The JI chief said that the talks were not the issue of two “Sharifs”, it was an issue of the country’s solidarity and the nation’s future. Therefore, both the Sharif’s should be on one page for making the talks successful. Even if the two Sharifs had difference on any issue, they should bury that and adopt a common stance at the negotiation table, he added.

He said, the nation had heaved a sigh of relief at the beginning of talks and all over the country, especially in the Khyber P.,  the people were busy in normal business. He noted that the country had lost more than fifty thousand lives besides suffering financial loss more than one hundred billion dollars.  However,  we were not ready to release three hundred people on Taliban’s demands. He said if the talks remained suspended and lawlessness continued, there was danger of more bloodshed.

To  a question regarding the fall of dollar price, he said that the benefit of this fall should also reach the common man. The dollar price was falling continuously but the prices of atta and other eatables had not come down. This was because the ruling elite was not prepared to treat the masses on equal footing. He said there was a wide gulf between the life style of the rich and that of the poor, exactly like the difference between the life and the thinking of the  Brahmans and the untouchables in a Hindu society. Unless and until, the ill gotten wealth of the corrupt ruling elite lying in foreign banks was recovered, corruption could not be brought to an end and the lot of the poor could not be improved.

To another question, he said that Pervez Musharraf’s case was in the court, and the eyes of the nation and the world were on the court. He said it would be in the interest of justice and the state that the supremacy of the constitution was  established and the verdicts of the judiciary were  implemented to prove that all are equal in the eyes of the law.

Replying to yet another question, he said that in order to hold fair, free and impartial elections, an independent and autonomous Election Commission on the pattern of the Election Commission in India must be set up that did not yield to any pressure from any quarter.