SUKKUR, Nov 30: Jamhoori Watan Party chief Nawab Mohammad Akbar Bugti has said that resistance in Balochistan has stopped because the government has put on hold work on construction of cantonments in the province.

If the government took up the construction work again, he warned, the resistance movement would be resumed.

The veteran Baloch leader was talking to a group of journalists at Dera Bugti on Tuesday. He said: "We have apprised Mushahid Hussain Syed and Tariq Aziz of our point of view." Senator Mushahid, he said, had understood the problems and the deprivation of the Baloch people and conceded that the people of Balochistan must get their rights.

Mr. Bugti said Senator Mushahid would submit his report to the government by Jan 7. He criticized the government of Balochistan and said it functioned as the agent of the federal government. The people of Balochistan suffered irreparable losses because of the wrong policies of the provincial government, he added.

He alleged that the government was trying to sell the Gwadar mega-project to an 'international mafia' which would convert the Baloch people into a minority. He said the Balochs were fighting for their rights, but the government was unjustly branding them terrorists.

Terming the politics of the MMA hypocritical, Nawab Bugti said the alliance of religious parties was the architect of the 17th constitutional amendment. He also said that the death of Nawabzada Nasrullah Khan was a great loss to the ARD and nobody could fill the vacuum.

Answering a question about any possibility of early general elections, he said he did not think that the present situation would force President Pervez Musharraf to hold early polls. He also said that if General Musharraf visited Balochistan he would be accorded a warm welcome in accordance with the Baloch tradition.