By NNN-PTI,
Washington : “Failure is not an option” in Pakistan’s fight against terrorism, the country’s President Asif Ali Zardari has said.
“This is an existential battle. If we lose, so too will the world. Failure is not an option,” Zardari said, a day after Pakistan was rocked by a brazen terror attack on Sri Lankan cricketers, the first in the history of cricket.
“Tuesday’s terrorist attack against the Sri Lankan cricket team in Lahore shows once again the evil we are confronting,” the Pakistan President said in an op-ed piece in the Wall Street Journal.
Touching on the issue of growing militancy in his nation, Zardari said, “we have not and will not negotiate with extremist Taliban and (other) terrorists”.
Defending the recent truce reached in the “highly volatile” Swat, Zardari said “the clerics with whom we have engaged are not Taliban… And it is their responsibility to rein in and neutralise Taliban and other insurgents”.
Zardari warned that if the truce did not work out and the Taliban militants did not lay down their arms, the security forces will act accordingly.
“In Swat, our strategy has been to enter into talks with traditional local clerics to help restore peace to the area, and return the writ of the state,” he wrote.