Pak Prez Zardari terms Imran Khan’s party chief minister's meeting with PM Shehbaz Sharif ‘good beginning’

Pakistan's newly elected President Asif Ali Zardari on Thursday welcomed the recent interaction between Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif and the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province chief minister, who belongs to the jailed ex-premier Imran Khan's party, terming it as a "good beginning" in political reconciliation.

On Wednesday, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa chief minister Ali Amin Khan Gandapur of Khan's Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) party met Sharif and discussed various issues about the restive province.

This was the two leaders' first meeting after they took charge of their respective posts earlier last week.

Gandapur also Sharif asked for a meeting with Khan, to which the prime minister apparently responded positively and agreed to address the concerns of the chief minister.

This came after the Punjab province government – led by Maryam Nawaz of Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) and arch-rival of Khan's PTI – on Tuesday imposed a two-week ban on all public visits, meetings and interviews at the high-security Adiala Jail at Rawalpindi, where the former prime minister Khan is lodged since last August.

Zardari, 68, who was elected president with the support of Sharif's PML-N party, said in a statement that the "outreach was a good beginning".

"It is high time we start thinking of working towards healing the divisions Pakistan has been going through," he said, referring to Khan's allegation that Sharif's PML-N stole the mandate in the February 8 elections.

The president said he had always advocated for prioritising Pakistan above all else, and it was time "we give people hope in the democratic process by showing them it could work".

Sharif returned to power after the election, but Khan and his party have alleged that the PML-N and its coalition partners, along with the powerful establishment, have stolen its mandate in the polls.

Last week, Gandapur abstained from welcoming Sharif when the prime minister visited Peshawar, the capital of Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa. He also said that he does not accept the PML-N's government.

Gandapur is considered a hawkish PTI leader, and his meeting with the prime minister is an apparent shift in the party's policy to cooperate with the federal government.

(This story has not been edited by Devdiscourse staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)