PESHAWAR, Sept 15: Nationalist forces of smaller provinces and the PPP here on Sunday vowed to wage war against the execution of the disputed Kalabagh dam project, and warned the military leadership that the intended move could even lead to the disintegration of the country.

At an anti-Kalabagh dam seminar arranged by the Awami National Party (ANP), leaders representing nationalist forces of Sindh, Balochistan and the NWFP as well as those of the PPP asked the military leadership to refrain from executing the project.

Otherwise, they warned, people of smaller provinces would take up arms to protect their constitutional rights, land, economic interest, heritage and, above all, their respect.

They described the project as an scheme of usurping smaller provinces’ resources and putting the country’s unity and integrity at risk.

Sindh would be turned into a barren area when its water resources would be controlled by Punjab through the KBD, they said. The NWFP’s five central districts with vast fertile land would also be severely hit as the salinity control projects executed with multi-billion-rupee lending would become useless due to the rising underground water level because of large water reservoir of the KBD.

They advised the government to execute Bhasha dam project instead which, according to them, would be more productive and beneficial to the country’s economy. It would not only be cost effective, it would also generate more electricity than the Kalabagh dam. Above all, the Bhasha dam would help enhance life of the Tarbela Dam, the country’s only large water storage project.

ANP’s Asfandyar Wali, Nasim Wali and Ghulam Bilour, Sindh’s ex-CM Mumtaz Bhutto, Balochistan National Movement’s Dr Ishaq Baloch, Sindh Awami Tehrik’s Rasool Bakhsh Palejo, Pukhtun Milli Awami Party’s Mukhtiar Khan Yousafzai, MQM’s Dr Farooq Sattar, Sindh Taraqi Pasand Party’s Dr Qadir Magsi, NAPP’s Latif Afridi and PQP’s Afzal Khan spoke at the seminar.

President Gen Pervez Musharraf’s Saturday’s televised address to the nation elicited strong reaction from them who rejected the president’s observation that Punjab had always offered sacrifices for the smaller provinces, particularly for the economic benefit of Sindh.

“He (the president) is mistaken if he thinks that Punjab has rendered sacrifice by giving only two per cent of its 51 per cent allotted share of water to Sindh,” said Mr Farooq Sattar. “Please, don’t make us to pay too big a price for the whole of our lives for only two per cent water,” he added.

He asked the president to reallocate four per cent of Sindh’s water to Punjab for the next three years. “But, please, abandon the KBD,” he remarked.

PPP’s Syed Khurshid Shah and MMA’s provincial general-secretary Maulana Gul Naseeb Khan also joined the nationalist leaders in their criticism of what they called “Punjab’s nefarious designs to control national resources” and “the military’s bid to establish Punjab’s dominance on smaller provinces, ignoring their interest.”