ISLAMABAD: Mystery surrounded the last-minute cancellation of a meeting between Interior Minister Chaudhry Nisar Ali Khan and Taliban negotiators on Saturday.
The interior ministry had announced the previous day that a meeting with the Taliban negotiation committee had been convened. But the meeting did not take place for some inexplicable reason.
Professor Ibrahim, a member of the Taliban committee, said he had not been informed of a meeting scheduled for Saturday. Asked if there was any misunderstanding, he said that he was not in a position to offer any comment.
An official of the ministry told that according to his information no meeting was scheduled for Saturday. But he had no answer when asked why an official announcement was made about Saturday’s meeting after the minister met Taliban committee’s head Maulana Samiul Haq two days ago. “There might have been some misunderstanding,” was Prof Ibrahim’s brief comment.
But, he added, it would be inappropriate to jump to the conclusion that the Taliban committee had refused to meet the minister or the government committee or that the peace process had hit a dead end.
