ISLAMABAD, Dec 20: Awami National Party (ANP) president Senator Asfandyar Wali Khan has alleged that the controversial Kalabagh dam was being built to hand over control of the Indus river water to Punjab at the cost of three smaller provinces.

“If General Musharraf had planned to kill us by sinking in the Indus river we will not accept the death of his choice and would rather take our own course to death”, he declared while talking to a group of newsmen at the Parliament House here.

The ANP chief reiterated his party’s threat of resigning from assemblies as soon as construction of Kalabagh dam was announced.

He said a national conference on Kalabagh dam would be held on December 29 in Nowshera in which all leading politicians of the country would be invited to discuss the situation arising out of a possible announcement of the KBD.

He warned that Kalabagh dam and Pakistan could not go together and any attempt to impose the project would be fatal to the integrity of the country. Referring to a suggestion by a League leader that construction of Bhasha would destroy the Karakoram Highway, Mr Afsandyar said: “Those who create fears about a highway’s destruction were in fact ignoring possible destruction of three provinces in various ways”.

He said that the Kalabagh dam would submerge the fertile land of the NWFP and would render Sindh barren.