The federal government has decided in principle to issue a working paper before the All Parties Conference (APC) expected to be called after Eid in order to devise a strategy for holding meaningful consultations over the grave challenges being faced by the country.
According to reports, the fresh spate of terror attacks has troubled the newly-elected PML-N government and its wants to devise a national policy to counter terrorism as soon as possible. Nawaz Sharif has tasked Interior Minister Chaudhry Nisar Ali Khan to contact various political parties for devising a policy on countering terrorism and necessary legislation if needed.
Nisar has started the consultative meetings and held his first meeting with Jamaat-e-Islami chief Munawar Hasan to devise a plan for meaningful talks with the Taliban. Several political parties had asked the government to provide them the working paper ahead of the APC in order to make the consultations meaningful.
The government intends to hold a closed-door meeting to make a comprehensive plan to counter the menace of terrorism. The interior minister will hold further meetings with different political parties in the coming days.
Meanwhile, it has been learnt that the military leadership has sent its recommendations to the government for new national security policy.
In its recommendations, the military leadership has urged the need for making the new national security policy broad-based.
It has been suggested that short- and long-term planning should be made for implementing this policy and no important aspect should be left out.
The sources said one of the main reasons behind delay in formation of the national security policy was that all the stakeholders were still not unanimous on the line of action. Sources said the government had been asked to take some difficult and hard decisions for implementation of the security policy.
