ISLAMABAD: Defence Minister Khawaja Muhammad Asif told the National Assembly that the PTI leadership was desperate to secure an NRO and wanted to talk with the establishment and not with the political parties sitting in the Parliament.
Responding to the speech of the Opposition Leader Omar Ayub, he said the PTI leadership would not be able to hold talks with anyone unless they apologised for the May 9 violence. Asif said the PTI founder Imran Khan was brought up in the lap of the establishment and was addicted to the same behaviour. He said Imran recalled the same old good times but he forgot that the country now had a new military leadership and a new system.
“Bajwa, Shujaat and Faiz are no more but the PTI founder is addicted to the same lap,” he said. Asif said the PTI leadership should go ahead and hold talks with those whom they were begging time and again.
“We have no dispute with them; they can move ahead as they want,” he said observing that the PTI leadership would try some other way of begging for an NRO once the establishment refused.
He said the PTI spokesman Rauf Hassan had been begging for talks and every day he was giving statements in this connection. Asif pointed out that the PTI founder was also issuing statements from the prison that he would talk to the military leadership.
He asked if Mahmood Khan Achakzai would hold talks with the establishment. “He is in the House. Ask him if he will talk to the establishment,” he said.
He pointed out that the PTI leadership had also declared Mahmood Khan Achakzai as the opposition alliance head. “What would be the view of my brother Mahmood Khan Achakzai on the PTI’s stand that they will talk to establishment only?” he asked.
On a point of personal explanation, Mahmood Khan Achakzai said he would hold talks with every institution, including the establishment. “We want to talk to them not for guidance but to give them an honourable way,” he said.
He said they wanted to tell the establishment that they were a respected institution and should sit with the political leadership. “The whole political leadership, this parliament, Nawaz Sharif, Asif Zardari, Jamaat-e-Islami, and JUI-F are unanimous on the supremacy of the Constitution,” he said.
