Secret dialogue with Pak security agencies-TTP enters decisive phase

Islamabad: The secret dialogue between Pakistan’s security agencies and the local Taliban has entered a decisive phase, and both sides are hopeful that their negotiations will restore peace in the country’s lawless tribal lands.

“We have drawn the broader outlines for a possible accord. And what we’re now working on are minor details,” said an intelligence official.

“Unlike the past, we are trying to have something workable and implementable this time around,” said the official referring to the failure of all three agreements the security institutions had had with the Tehreek-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP).

“These are crucial times and we have to be extremely careful. A slight miscalculation can harm us in a big way,” the official, requesting anonymity, added in an apparent reference to changes in the regional war given the eventual withdrawal of the US-led international forces by 2014,’' The Express Tribune quoted the official, as saying.

Pakistan’s Army spokesperson did not respond to phone calls or text message to comment on this development. Publicly, the military denies having any talks with the militants.

Senior TTP associates also confirmed that these covert talks with the military establishment were reaching a climax and said things were moving ahead.

Last month, TTP leader Maulvi Waliur Rehman Mehsud had ordered to halt the training of suicide bombers at several camps in South and North Waziristan.

“Now look how effective this thing alone is … it has never happened in four years that the TTP stops training its suicide bombers,” said Raqeebullah Mehsud, a young militant commander from the Ludha area of South Waziristan.

Raqeebullah said TTP chief Hakimullah Mehsud was not aware of these talks and he, along with a core group following his hard-line positions on talks with the government, was aware of these negotiations.