July 18, 2007	Wednesday	Rajab 02, 1428

PESHAWAR, July 17: The Awami National Party (ANP) has opposed the deployment of troops in some parts of the NWFP, apparently without the consent of the provincial government and the provincial assembly. But it has asked the local Taliban and the military establishment to avoid bloodshed.

“The militants and military men are accomplishing a foreign agenda in the region, without realising its dire consequences,” said the acting president of the ANP, Ghulam Ahmed Bilour, at a press conference here on Tuesday. He added that the province could become a battlefield in a “war of aliens”.

He was flanked by ANP provincial president Afrasiab Khattak, deputy general secretary Haji Adeel and provincial general secretary Mian Iftikhar Hussain, besides Bashir Ahmed Bilour, Mian Mushtaq and Hameed-ur-Rehman.

The ANP leader used polite language for the local Taliban, calling them “Taliban brothers”, “Pakhtun brothers” and “Muslim brothers”.

Ghulam Ahmed Bilour, while requesting the local Taliban to adopt peaceful means, said: “Let us make sense at this critical juncture as violence and suicide attacks will only turn Pakhtuns, who too are Muslims, into the ultimate sufferers.”

He appealed to the Pakistani establishment to resolve all crises through peaceful means and dialogue.

He claimed that the ANP was making hectic efforts to avoid clashes in Swat, Tank and other parts of the province and tribal areas and in this regard had constituted a local jirga.

About the Waziristan peace agreement, he said the ANP was in favour of a treaty in which the local tribesmen and their representatives would be involved. The ANP leader condemned the Lal Masjid operation and said that General Musharraf had approved the operation at a time when the Ulema Committee and the PML-Q team had reached a peaceful agreement over the issue.

He said: “We demand a judicial inquiry headed by a Supreme Court judge to thoroughly investigate the Lal Masjid operation which led to the killing of innocent students.”

He said that Chaudhry Shujaat had made a deal with the late Akbar Bugti but due to the rigid and stubborn attitude of the military rulers, the veteran Baloch leader was brutally killed.

He said that General Musharraf had spared the MQM activists involved in the May 12 killings in Karachi and turned down demands for investigations into the deaths of more than 42 people. However, the general had opted for a military action against the students of Jamia Hafsa in Islamabad.

Mr Bilour, who attended the APC in London along with Asfandyar Wali Khan, said the All Parties Democratic Movement was a united platform of all democratic forces in the country, which would launch a vigorous campaign against the military regime.