QUETTA, April 15: The Jamhoori Watan Party (JWP) on Saturday rejected a conditional offer the government had reportedly made to hold talks with Nawab Akbar Khan Bugti and announced that the veteran nationalist leader was satisfied with his policy of defending the Baloch against the ‘state assault’.

Addressing a press conference, JWP’s information secretary Amanullah Kanrani said Nawab Bugti was not involved in any illegal activity. Criticising the government for launching what he called a character assassination campaign against Nawab Bugti, he said that after its failure to defeat the JWP leader, the government had implicated him in false electricity theft cases.

He alleged that the state had imposed ‘war’ on Balochistan but said that the people of the province had been successfully defending their rights for the past four months. Mr Kanrani said that 150,000 people had moved from Dera Bugti to Dera Murad Jamali, Jaffarabad, Nasirabad, Jaccobabad and other towns owing to the bombing by security forces.

He said these people now wanted to return but a colonel of Bambore Rifles and some officials in the district administration had warned them of dire consequences if they attempted to come back.