Pakistan’s former prime minister Imran Khan (pictured) called off reconciliation talks with the government yesterday, his party’s chairman said.Aimed at cooling political instability in the South Asian nation, the talks had started late last year ahead of the judgment in a hotly disputed land corruption case against the 72-year-old former cricket star-turned-politician.The graft case linked to Khan involves land given by a real estate tycoon to a welfare institution set up by Khan and his wife.“Khan has called off negotiations,” the party chairman, Gohar Khan, told reporters in comments telecast live by local Geo News TV after he said he met the former premier in jail.He said Khan conveyed his decision after the expiry of a seven-day deadline he had given to the government to respond to demands he had given last week.Khan’s Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) party mainly demands the setting up of two judicial commissions to probe the events and circumstances that led to his arrest on May 9, 2023, resulting in attacks on military installations, which the party has repeatedly called a false flag operation to stop it from returning to power in a subsequent election, and a controversial operation to disperse a PTI protest gathering at the D-Chowk in front of the national parliament on November 26 last year that the party alleges resulted in scores of deaths.Khan’s controversial removal from office in 2022 stoked the instability, and threatens an economic recovery under a $7bn IMF bailout.
