Imran Khan: Army's days are over in Pakistan

Davos: Cricketer-turned-politician Imran Khan, who is drawing massive crowds in his country, has declared that "army's days are over" in Pakistan and vowed to have "best relations" with India.

"Let me assure you that democracy is set to take off in Pakistan. You just wait till the elections. The time has come for a true democracy in Pakistan," Khan said on the sidelines of the World Economic Forum (WEF) summit being held in Davos.

"The army's days are over. You will soon see a true democracy in Pakistan," Khan, who also attended the India reception party on Friday night, told PTI.

Khan saw nothing wrong in taking groups like the outlawed Jamat-ud-Dawah (JuD) along in his political journey.

Asked about his association with such extremist group, which has acted as a front of the LeT that carried out the Mumbai attacks, Khan drew attention to the US support to Taliban during the era of Soviet occupation of Afghanistan.

"Is taking along different groups of people with an aim to bring them to the mainstream wrong? What you should understand is that you have to talk to various kinds of people in politics. If I try to bring them (extremists) back to the mainstream, there is nothing wrong in it," he said.

Continuing with his argument, Khan, who has been generating a lot of crowd at his political rallies in Pakistan, said, "And if you talk about support to the extremists, did America not support the Taliban?"

"The politics requires you to talk to various groups of people and there is certainly nothing wrong if I want to bring them back to the main fold and change their mindset. For that, I would have to talk to them. I can assure you best of the relations with India and these things would never come in the way," he added.

Khan, the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaaf party chief, said: "The people of Pakistan are waiting for the change. They want a democracy of their choice".

"The democracy is bound to come there. There are lots of expectations among the people of Pakistan. They have had it enough and now they desperately want a change that would allow their voice to be heard".

Signing off, he said, "We will have a true democracy and there should be no doubts about that".

Source: IBN live Read more