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| India-Pakistan |
| MMA revival must to curtail sectarianism: Fazl |
| 2010-07-16 |
| [The News (Pak) Top Stories] JUI leader Maulana Fazlur Rehman has offered an olive branch on behalf of the Taliban to the West fighting in Afghanistan and has claimed the Taliban had an upper hand in the war and the West should start a political dialogue with them. The leader of Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam and coalition partner with Pakistan People's Party in the Centre said at a press conference here the stated objectives of waging war on Afghanistan had completely failed. The interventions in Iraq and Afghanistan have turned into a nightmare for the coalition forces, said Maulana Fazl, offering to the west that there is no choice but to talk to what he called "the resistance fighters". He confirmed that western diplomats had met him to seek his views over finding a political solution of the crisis but added that swift progress was required. He welcomed Hamid Karzai's formation of a jirga accepting Taliban as the political forces as a step in the right direction and asked Britain and the US to follow the suit and remove them (Taliban) from the blacklist, take back the UN approved terror list and allow them to travel so they can come forward to take part in the political process. "The war that was started by the West in the name of freedom for Afghan people 2001 is far from over. It's intensifying and expanding. The coalition has failed. But its implications for Pakistan are far more serious. This war is expanding more in Pakistan," said Maulana Fazl, fearing that he sensed a plot against Pakistan by its eternal enemies who wanted it to descend into a civil war. "Pakistanis are thinking that the US is shifting the war to Pakistan. This perception needs to change. The US must leave the region and stop repeating the failed experiments," he said. He said a political solution was needed for Afghanistan to save both Afghanistan and Pakistan. He noted that sectarianism was on rise in Pakistan and claimed that state-sponsored foreign elements were fanning the sectarian hatred, adding that it was to counter this tendency that he had initiated dialogue with his former rightist partners to revive the fundamentalist Muttahida Majlis-e-Amal (MMA). "The revival of MMA is essential and it will be good for the national unity," he said. |
| Posted by:Fred |