Khan Sees Pakistani Taliban Talks Failing as Strike Looms

Pakistan peace talks with Taliban militants will probably fail and an ensuing military operation would lead to more terrorism, according to Imran Khan, head of the party that runs a province bordering Afghanistan.
Negotiators representing Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif’s government and Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan -- known as the Pakistani Taliban, or TTP -- called for a cease-fire yesterday after starting formal talks for the first time to end violence the government says has killed 40,000 Pakistanis since 2001. The TTP had named Khan as a negotiator, a post he turned down.
“The most likely result is that the negotiations will start, there will be about three or four big explosions and terrorist attacks and the negotiations will be called off,” Khan, a former cricket star and a vocal advocate of peace talks, said in an interview yesterday at his villa in the hills of Islamabad. “There will be people baying for blood and the operation will start.”
Khan’s pessimism signals further instability in Pakistan, which would threaten Sharif’s efforts to revive the $225 billion economy as the U.S. prepares to draw down troops in neighboring Afghanistan. Khan blocked NATO supply routes to Kabul in the Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa region where his party holds power to protest American drone strikes in Pakistan’s tribal areas, and called for the U.S. to publicly announce an end to the aerial attacks.