ISLAMABAD - Finance Minister Ishaq Dar Monday night had a word with Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf Secretary General Jahangir Tareen over the stalled talks on probe into alleged rigging in 2013 general elections through a high powered judicial commission.
Sources in the ruling Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz informed that Dar, who is also head of the government negotiation team, handed over reply to the letter written to him by Tareen seeking reply on the points agreed between the two parties.
In their last formal meeting of December 30 both sides had to sign an agreement on the points agreed between them in their successive meetings, PTI leaders had claimed. After that formal interaction Ishaq Dar along with Ahsan Iqbal left the residence of Jahangir Tareen saying they had final wish list of PTI and now would return to them after having input on it from the party leadership and other parliamentary parties.
But PTI negotiation team head Shah Mehmood Qureshi had showed his disappointment over the situation saying that they came there with the mind to ink the accord but the government team was sidetracking and lingering the matter. Since then the government team never returned to PTI with their formal response.
The silence on part of government negotiation team prompted PTI Secretary General Jahanigr Khan Tareen to write a letter to Ishaq Dar reminding him of his commitment and after having telephonic conversation a couple of days back the Monday meeting was fixed between them.
Sources said that in reply to the letter of Tareen, the finance minister once again highlighted the constitutional and legal hurdles in the way of formation of Judicial Commission the way PTI is demanding. The PML-N leader also repeated his party's reservations over the definition of rigging and the terms of reference of the proposed commission. Dar also referred to the limitation of the government to constitute a commission in presence of Article 225 which would not allow them to form a commission as per PTI wishes.
However, PTI leadership claims the ruling PML-N negotiation team had earlier agreed to constitute the commission in the light of Article 89 of the Constitution. Jahangir Khan Tareen in his letter to Dar had asked him to come up with formal reply to their final wish list wherein, according to him, the PTI had already conceded a lot of ground and was not ready to show more flexibility.