March 24, 2008	Monday	Rabi-ul-Awwal 15, 1429

PESHAWAR, March 23: The Awami National Party (ANP) has called upon political forces to work for the integration of the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (Fata) into the province so that the tribal people could play an effective role in affairs of the state.

Giving a keynote address at the Dialogue Forum of the Bhutto Shaheed Foundation here on Saturday, ANP provincial chief Afrasiab Khattak said people of the Fata were citizens of Pakistan, but they had been denied basic human rights.

The tribesmen elect their representatives but they could not take part in political activities. He said the rulers had turned the Fata into a nursery of militants to advance their own agenda.

“People say that army was a state within the state but now it has become a state,” Mr Khattak claimed, adding that militarisation of the state was the root-cause of the present crisis, which had destroyed each and every institution in the country.

He said for the last many decades the army had been running the affairs, sometimes directly ruling the state and sometime playing an indirect role from behind the scene. — Bureau Report