Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif on Tuesday said the government was open to dialogue with Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf but would not accept what he called \u201cillegal demands or blackmail.\u201d<\/p>\n
He made the remarks while speaking at a federal cabinet meeting in Islamabad.<\/p>\n
\u201cThese days, PTI and its allies are talking about dialogue. I have repeatedly stated in the National Assembly that if PTI is serious about negotiations, the government is equally prepared,\u201d the prime minister said.<\/p>\n
However, Shehbaz said talks could only move forward if they focused on \u201clegitimate issues.\u201d<\/p>\n
He stressed that political harmony among all parties was essential for Pakistan\u2019s development and prosperity.<\/p>\n
Meanwhile, Aleema Khan, sister of PTI founder Imran Khan, has rejected the idea of dialogue from the party\u2019s side.<\/p>\n
Speaking to reporters outside the Rawalpindi anti-terrorism court a day earlier, she said any party leader advocating talks was neither aligned with Imran Khan nor with PTI.<\/p>\n
Read:\u00a0Govt, allies push back at Opposition alliance charter<\/p>\n
She also said she was unaware of the communiqu\u00e9 issued after a two-day conference of the Pakistan Constitution Protection Movement and had not been formally informed about it.<\/p>\n
On Monday, the opposition alliance released a joint declaration after two days of meetings in Islamabad.<\/p>\n
The declaration included demands for a probe into the February 24 general elections and called for dialogue with the government.<\/p>\n
Reacting to the opposition\u2019s demands, Federal Minister for Parliamentary Affairs Dr Tariq Fazal Chaudhry of the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz said the government was not opposed to dialogue.<\/p>\n
The Pakistan Peoples Party, a key coalition partner in the federal government, also supported talks but with conditions.<\/p>\n
PPP Secretary Nayyer Bukhari told\u00a0The Express Tribune\u00a0that dialogue would only be meaningful if confidence-building measures were taken.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey want dialogue with some other quarters,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif on Tuesday said the government was open to dialogue with Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf but would not accept what he called \u201cillegal demands or blackmail.\u201d He made the remarks while speaking at a federal cabinet meeting in Islamabad. \u201cThese days, PTI and its allies are talking about dialogue. I have repeatedly stated in …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":207,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-206","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/pakistantimesusa.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/206","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/pakistantimesusa.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/pakistantimesusa.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pakistantimesusa.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pakistantimesusa.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=206"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/pakistantimesusa.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/206\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":208,"href":"https:\/\/pakistantimesusa.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/206\/revisions\/208"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pakistantimesusa.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/207"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/pakistantimesusa.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=206"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pakistantimesusa.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=206"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pakistantimesusa.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=206"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}