Sanaullah says PTI cannot hold the state hostage over its demands

The PTI cannot force the government to accept its demands by holding the state hostage and creating political instability, Adviser to the Prime Minister on Political Affairs Rana Sanaullah said on Wednesday.

Speaking to the media in Islamabad, Sanaullah said the government would not allow talks with the opposition to be turned into a “tool” for political demands.

“Doors for talks are open,” he said, recalling Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif’s appeal a day earlier for the PTI leadership to sit down for talks and drop its protest plans. Negotiations, however, could not be used to strong-arm the government, he added.

Talks in deadlock

The press conference followed the collapse of the latest effort to reach a deal. On Sunday, a second round of talks between the government and the opposition at Parliament House ended in a deadlock after hours of discussion, much of it about the PTI’s march on Islamabad.

On Monday, PTI leaders said reconciliation was not possible unless jailed party founder Imran Khan was included in the dialogue. They also blamed the failure on what they called the government’s unwillingness to pursue a joint strategy against terrorism.

Sanaullah called that claim “completely wrong” and “misleading”, and said the reasons for the deadlock had been misrepresented.

Counterterrorism policy

“The policy on countering terrorism is already being acted upon,” Sanaullah said, pointing to intelligence-based operations carried out daily with “huge success”. He said the armed forces and law enforcement agencies were sacrificing their lives to keep those operations going.

He rejected claims that new military operations were planned or that more people would be displaced. The ongoing operations would continue under the existing counterterrorism policy, he said, adding that Chief of Defence Forces and Chief of Army Staff Field Marshal Asim Munir had already made clear that no one would be internally displaced.

In June 2024, the government announced a renewed Operation Azm-i-Istehkam. After criticism, it clarified that the plan meant intensifying ongoing intelligence-based operations and renamed it Vision Azm-i-Istehkam.

Afghanistan

Turning to tensions with Kabul, Sanaullah said Pakistan had been “fair” in asking the Afghan government not to let its soil be used for terrorism against Pakistan.

He said that across several rounds of talks, the Afghan interim government had accepted as true the evidence Pakistan presented of attacks launched from Afghanistan, but had refused to guarantee that its land would not be used for such attacks.

“Pakistan’s policy is that it has the right to neutralise training camps or any activity on Afghan land that could cause terrorism in Pakistan later on,” Sanaullah said, adding that the policy drew on more than 40 years of experience. He said the PTI was the only party opposed to it, because it put its politics ahead of the national interest.

Criticism of the KP government

Sanaullah recalled the PTI’s earlier protests in Islamabad in 2022 and 2024, and pointed to the recent rise in terrorism, saying the martyred included children, civilians and soldiers from Khyber Pakhtunkhwa.

“On one hand, the martyrs’ bodies were lying there, and on the other hand, the entire provincial government was playing the dhol and chanting slogans, urging people to join the march on Islamabad,” he said.

He called the provincial government’s attitude “unacceptable” and said people in the province had condemned it too. “Prioritising personal and political agendas over national interest is not permissible by law, the Constitution or political ethics,” he said, adding that governance and public welfare were not on the PTI’s agenda.

This article draws on reporting by Dawn.