{{Pakistan’s government and Taliban met Thursday for a first round of talks aimed at ending the militants’ bloody seven-year insurgency, sources said.}}<\/p>\n
The two sides gathered in Islamabad for a preliminary meeting likely to chart a “roadmap” for future discussions, amid deep scepticism over whether dialogue can yield a lasting peace deal.<\/p>\n
The Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), an umbrella grouping of numerous militant factions, has waged a campaign since 2007, killing thousands of people in gun and bomb attacks across the nuclear-armed state.<\/p>\n
An official close to Irfan Siddiqui, the chief government negotiator, told reporters the talks had begun on Thursday afternoon.<\/p>\n
Another official at the talks venue, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa House, confirmed that they had started.<\/p>\n
The peace initiative, which Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif announced just as many were anticipating a major military offensive on TTP strongholds in North Waziristan tribal area, got off to a chaotic start earlier this week.<\/p>\n
AFP<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
{{Pakistan’s government and Taliban met Thursday for a first round of talks aimed at ending the militants’ bloody seven-year insurgency, sources said.}} The two sides gathered in Islamabad for a preliminary meeting likely to chart a “roadmap” for future discussions, amid deep scepticism over whether dialogue can yield a lasting peace deal. The Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2000050191,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[101],"byline":[170],"hashtag":[],"class_list":["post-12372","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","tag-internationl","byline-igihe"],"bylines":[{"id":170,"name":"IGIHE","slug":"igihe","description":"","image":{"id":0,"url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/?s=96&d=mm&f=y&r=g","alt":"Default avatar","title":"Default avatar","caption":"","mime_type":"image\/jpeg","sizes":[]},"user_id":8}],"contributors":[{"id":170,"name":"IGIHE","slug":"igihe","description":"","image":{"id":0,"url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/?s=96&d=mm&f=y&r=g","alt":"Default avatar","title":"Default avatar","caption":"","mime_type":"image\/jpeg","sizes":[]},"user_id":8}],"featured_image":{"id":2000050191,"url":"https:\/\/en-images.igihe.com\/IMG\/logo\/arton12372.jpg","alt":"","caption":"","mime_type":"image\/jpeg","width":0,"height":0,"sizes":{"thumbnail":{"url":"https:\/\/en-images.igihe.com\/IMG\/logo\/arton12372.jpg","width":1,"height":1},"medium":{"url":"https:\/\/en-images.igihe.com\/IMG\/logo\/arton12372.jpg","width":1,"height":1},"medium_large":{"url":"https:\/\/en-images.igihe.com\/IMG\/logo\/arton12372.jpg","width":1,"height":1},"large":{"url":"https:\/\/en-images.igihe.com\/IMG\/logo\/arton12372.jpg","width":1,"height":1},"full":{"url":"https:\/\/en-images.igihe.com\/IMG\/logo\/arton12372.jpg","width":0,"height":0}}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12372","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12372"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12372\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2000050191"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12372"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12372"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12372"},{"taxonomy":"byline","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/byline?post=12372"},{"taxonomy":"hashtag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/hashtag?post=12372"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}