Taliban unfolding their cards: TTP wants Mullah Fazlullah to lead Pakistan: spokesman
ISLAMABAD: The outlawed Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) has said that the militants, who are fighting for Sharia in Pakistan, want their chief Mullah Fazlullah to lead the country, adding that he has all the qualities in this regard.
“In Pakistan, Mullah Fazlullah is leading us and he has all the qualities to lead the Pakistani nation,” the TTP spokesman Shahidullah Shahid said in an interview with Newsweek Pakistan.
The TTP spokesman said that the TTP is at war with the government for two reasons, its friendship with the US and the continuation of the un-Islamic democratic system.
“We want the establishment of Sharia in Pakistan; this was the reason that Pakistan was created,” Shahid said.
The spokesman said that the Taliban are for a ceasefire but the government should announce it first.
Shahid also described the government’s assertion that peace talks be conducted within the framework of the Constitution as a ‘precondition’.
“We do not disagree with the demands being attributed to us in the media. However, we have issued no such information to the media,” the TTP spokesman said when asked about 15 demands the TTP has reportedly made for talks with the government
The Taliban’s position has been communicated to the government through a committee led by radical cleric Maulana Samiul Haq, he said. The TTP spokesman said that his group wants the peace process to succeed even though previous talks failed because of the government’s ‘non-seriousness and foreign pressure’.
“If these talks fail, the government will obviously try to launch a military operation. But we have been tested before and passed such phases with success dozens of times,” he said.
