Islamabad:

As Terror cuts the province, Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa (KP) Chief Minister Ali Amin Gandapur has called on the federal government to formally leave him the responsibility of negotiating with the Afghan Taliban and claiming that dialogue was the only viable path to peace in the region.

In a speech with journalists in Islamabad on Friday, Gandapur said his government had formulated a peace plan in consultation with the tribe’s advisers from all agencies and submitted it to the Foreign Office and the Ministry of the Interior.

However, he complained that the proposal remained unanswered. “Taliban cannot refuse conversations with tribal elders. Bring them to the table – negotiations is the only solution,” he added.

“I want to hold conversations with [Taliban supreme leader Haibatullah] Akhunzada. “

“Right now I have no contact with the Taliban, but if I am sent, we will make it work,” he added. He also took a jibe with Jui-F chief Maulana Fazlur Rehman and claimed that his influence on the Taliban had disappeared and that only the Taliban leaders at the lower level engaged with him.

“Sit with the Taliban across the table, hold conversations with them, that’s the only solution,” KP cm claimed.

Gandapur pointed out that the priest-politician was persuaded all other political parties in holding public collections in KP prior to the 2024 election. “We hid in the mountains before the election. We did not hold any rally,” he said.

In the past, he approached an IFTAR party that hosted him, Gandapur said his province has come out of the financial crisis. KP has a profit of RS159 billion, while Punjab has been exposed to an RS148 billion deficit. “We have introduced transparency in the province,” he added.

Brushing claims aside, he said that if the province was in excess of corruption, such corruption should be adopted by all other provinces.