May 29, 2007	Tuesday	Jamadi-ul-Awwal 12, 1428

KARACHI, May 28: Chief of the National Party (NP) Dr Abdul Hayee Baloch has urged the opposition parties and bar bars not to ignore the Balochistan issue in their campaign as the struggle for the constitutional rights of Baloch people was against authoritarian rule. He said the lawyer fraternity and the opposition parties should keep the Balochistan issue on their agenda.

Dr Hayee, who arrived here from Quetta, was briefing office-bearers and party workers about the political situation obtaining in the troubled province where, according to him, a military operation was still under way.

He said the operation had been extended from Dera Bugti and Kohlu to Jhalawan and Makran. While all successive governments had neglected the province, the opposition parties had also started neglecting it, he observed.

He said the present government’s designs stood fully exposed as it had never concealed its policy of exploitation vis-à-vis Balochistan.

The NP leader said the government was bent upon taking away coastal and mineral resources of the province, and vowed that people of Balochistan would never compromise on their right on these resources. He reiterated the party’s demand that provinces must be given control of their own resources as enshrined in the Constitution.

He urged lawyers and opposition parties to include the issue of provincial autonomy in their ongoing campaign against the dictatorial policy of the Musharraf regime as thousands of Baloch people, including Nawab Akbar Khan Bugti, had already laid down their lives in their struggle against dictators and dictatorship. Thousands others, including Sardar Akhtar Mengal, had been sent behind the bars or kidnapped, he added.

Dr Hayee also condemned the May 12 mayhem in Karachi, and held both the federal and Sindh governments equally responsible for the bloodshed. “It was the MQM’s well-conceived plan under which barricades had been put up across the city to prevent people from reaching the airport and accord a rousing welcome to the chief justice of Pakistan,” he observed.

He criticised the act of banning PTI chief Imran Khan’s entry in Sindh, and condemned the leader’s character assassination by the MQM. “All this is the follow-up of the May 12 events as the MQM is desperately struggling to make others believe that Karachi belongs to this particular ethnic group,” he remarked.

He pointed out that many ethnic communities, including Sindhi, Baloch, Pathan and Punjabi, lived in Karachi and the city belonged to everyone who lived in that city.

The observed that the MQM was creating hatred between Urdu-speaking and all other ethnic communities, and hoped that sanity would prevail and prevent the MQM from pursuing the policy of hatred.