KP CM wants another APC ‘if Taliban talks are impossible’

LAHORE: Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Chief Minister Pervaiz Khattak wants the federal government convene another all-party conference (APC) if it cannot implement the unanimous decision of giving peace a chance through talks with the Taliban. “The APC had authorised the government to hold dialogue with the Taliban. If for some reason it is unable to act in accordance with the decision, it should gather all the political parties to discuss the options it has been left with,” Khattak told a questioner at a press conference here on Sunday. He was on a visit to the Punjab capital for ‘building image’ of the PTI government in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa. Opposes army operation in North Waziristan Opposing the option of military operation in North Waziristan, he said the forces could not yet control tribal agencies and terrorists were roaming freely even in Bara Agency, adjacent to KP capital Peshawar. Instead, he suggested, the government should take the tribes into confidence and evolve a strategy for finding a peaceful solution to the militancy issue. The KP chief minister said the federation was obstructing generation of cheap power for industry in the province through use of natural gas of the KP share. Responding to a query on Kalabagh Dam, he said he was ready to support the water reservoir on Indus River provided he was convinced that it would not damage upstream Nowshera. Pervaiz Khattak claimed the KP was promulgating a law on conflict of interest to bar authorities from taking advantage of their official positions in business, adding that his government was also setting up the Ehtesab Cell for he believed that the National Accountability Bureau chief was selected through compromise between the government and the opposition. The cell, he said, would be powerful enough to arrest the chief minister if found guilty of any corruption. The KP chief minister said he was considering tripling salaries of bureaucrats while withdrawing the facilities of official residences and vehicles from them. He said all the rest houses of the province were also being handed over to the tourism department to make them profitable. He said he was decentralizing each department and introducing consultants and technocrats in them, reducing the role of bureaucrats to oversee as the ‘kalay angraiz’ (black English) failed to do any good to the masses during the last 65 years. The KP government was also enacting a right to service law wherein the officials failing to do their duty within stipulated period would be made to pay penalty to the affected individual/party, he said and rejected the impression that PTI chairman Imran Khan was interfering in the provincial government’s affairs. KP ministers Shah Farman, Atif and Shehram as Punjab PTI President Ijaz Chaudhry also spoke. Published in Dawn, May 19th, 2014