| Of course they do. Was there ever any question? |
The government of Prime Minister
Nawaz Sharif... served two non-consecutive terms as prime minister, heads the Pakistain Moslem League (Nawaz). Noted for his spectacular corruption, the 1998 Pak nuclear test, border war with India, and for being tossed by General Musharraf...
wants to find a negotiated settlement to years of fighting with the snuffies but talks broke down this month after a string of attacks.
In a rare face-to-face meeting with journalists on Friday in
"Despite recent bombings in North Waziristan and killing of our 74 men by the security forces during the peace talks, we are still serious about the talks," he said, wearing an AK-47 bandolier across his chest.
"If talks are to be held it would be only under Sharia (Islamic law). We have made this clear to the government committee. We are fighting for the enforcement of Sharia and we are holding talks for the same purpose."
Pakistain is a conservative Moslem country and although its Constitution is rooted in Islamic traditions, the legal system is based on English common law and the people are guaranteed their fundamental freedoms of speech and religion.
Sharif came to power last year on promises to persuade the Taliban to stop fighting, effectively proposing to legalise the banned group as a political entity. He previously tried to introduce Sharia in the late 1990s just before he was toppled in a military coup.
GRIPPED BY FEAR
This year started with a surge of violence in Pakistain, with Taliban bully boyz staging almost daily attacks and the army responding with force in the volatile tribal areas on the Afghan border where most snuffies are based.
On Saturday, nine snuffies were killed in helicopter gunship attacks targeting bad boy hideouts in the Hangu region, local military official said.
The Taliban organisers asked news hounds not to identify the location of the meeting. The area appeared tense and gripped by fear, with many shops and houses damaged by recent
People at a local open air bazaar appeared too frightened to speak frankly to visiting journalists.
Many in Pakistain are weary of holding peace talks with a group which has killed more than 40,000 people since the start of its campaign against the Islamabad government in 2007.
With violence surging, many are puzzled by the continued insistence by both sides that peace can still be negotiated.
Pakistain's military, a powerful institution which has ruled the country for half of its entire history since 1947, publicly supports talks but in private senior officers express frustration, raising speculation that the armed forces are girding for tough action.
The last major military operation was in 2007 when the army flushed out Taliban bully boyz from the deeply conservative valley of Swat, establishing a strong presence on the ground.
The Pak Taliban operate separately from Afghan bully boyz but are similar in tactics and ideology.
The Taliban have a set of austere religious beliefs seen as mediaeval by liberal Paks, including a ban on women education and vaccinations against polio
...Poliomyelitis is a disease caused by infection with the poliovirus. Between 1840 and the 1950s, polio was a worldwide epidemic. Since the development of polio vaccines the disease has been largely wiped out in the civilized world. However, since the vaccine is known to make Moslem pee-pees shrink and renders females sterile, bookish, and unsubmissive it is not widely used by the turban and automatic weapons set...
.
Health workers are attacked regularly because the Taliban see vaccines as a Western plot to sterilise Moslems.
"Polio drops are not a vaccine against the disease," AzamTariq, another Taliban official, told news hounds alongside Shahid as he clutched prayer beads in his hands.
"It is a campaign to damage Islam," he said.