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The Pakistan government on Sunday refused to change its position on talks with Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI), reiterating that it would present a written response to their charter of demands during the next meeting scheduled to be held on Tuesday, Dawn reported.
Meanwhile, the PTI has called for the immediate appointment of a new chief election commission, as the incumbent Sikandar Sultan Raja's tenure ended on Sunday. Last week, PTI announced calling off talks as the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) led government did not respond to its demand to constitute judicial commissions to investigate the May 9, 2023 and November 26, 2024 protests. On Saturday, PTI Secretary General Salman Akram Raja said that he had a meeting with PTI founder Imran Khan. According to him, Imran Khan showed an interest in meeting the PTI negotiation committee. On Sunday, the Pakistan government said that PTI had left the talks, despite the agreement that the former would give its response to the demands given by the Imran Khan-founded party within seven working days, meaning January 28, Dawn reported. In a statement, the Pakistan government's negotiation team spokesperson Senator Irfan Siddiqui said, "We are not ready to be ridiculed (by announcing our replies publicly or before the media). We will present our replies before the committee in the forthcoming meeting." He quoted PTI chairman Gohar Ali Khan as saying that Imran Khan had asked the party to call off talks as the government was not sincere in constituting judicial commissions. He further said, "We cannot reply (to the PTI's demands) before the 28th. We will neither give our replies nor make any announcement regarding the [judicial] commissions before [the end of] seven days," Dawn reported. Meanwhile, Gohar Ali Khan said that although PTI had left the dialogue process. He could convince Imran Khan to participate in the meeting if the government agreed to hold dialogue on the terms of reference (TORs) of the judicial commissions. The first round of talks between PTI and the government was held on December 23, 2024, to discuss the long-standing issues and find a way forward. Since the talks started in December, the two sides have met thrice. Currently, the fate of talks hangs in balance as PTI has made it clear that the only way to resume talks was to establish commissions. However, the government side stressed that PTI should have waited for the government's response before calling off talks. (ANI)
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