QUETTA: Pakhtunkhwa Milli Awami Party (PkMAP) chief Mehmood Khan Achakzai said on Tuesday that Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif had supported his proposal to convene a multi-party conference to remove reservations of some political parties of small provinces over reported government plan to make changes in the original route of Pakistan-China Economic Corridor.

Speaking at a press conference here, Mr Achakzai said that the project was an important development programme that would benefit the entire nation, therefore, political leaders should avoid making it controversial just for ‘point scoring’.

Also read: No change in Pak-China corridor route, Fazl assured

He expressed the hope that when political leaders would sit together on a table they would be able to develop consensus on the issue.

Mr Achakzai said he had discussed the matter with the prime minister and apprised him of reservations some political parties have expressed over the reported government plan to change the route of the economic corridor. Mr Sharif, he added, assured him of resolving the issue.

The PkMAP chief clarified that his party was against any change in the original route of the corridor, saying that implementation on the original plan of the project would help improve unity among people of four provinces.

He said the economic corridor would play an important role in facilitating Pakistan’s trade with Central Asian states via Afghanistan.

Mr Achakzai said Jamiat Ulema-i-Islam chief Maulana Fazlur Rehman had discussed the issue with the chairman of National Highway Authority (NHA) and inspected the area of Dera Ismail Khan which would become a part of corridor.

The PkMAP chief said Pakhtuns living in Balochistan were facing difficulty in obtaining National Identity Cards (NIC) because of complications in the procedure of National Database and Registration Authority (Nadra) and added that around 50,000 cards had been blocked by the authority.

He criticised the management of Nadra for denying NICs to local Pakhtuns, saying that “neither every Pakhtun is a terrorist nor any person wearing a turban is an Afghan refugee”.

He said the registered Afghan refugees were living in the country under a tripartite agreement between Pakistan, Afghanistan and the UNHCR, therefore, arrest of registered refugees were against international laws.

Talking about the coming Senate elections, Mr Achakzai said he had discussed the polls related matters with the prime minister and suggested that coalition partners in the province should field joint candidates in order o discourage horse-trading.

Political alliance

Leaders of different political parties who recently formed a group ‘all parties alliance’ to take a united stance against the reported government plan of making changes in the original route of Gwadar-Kashgar economic corridor have called upon the prime minister to announce that no change is being made in the original plan of the project otherwise they would launch a protest movement against the government.

Speaking at a joint press conference here on Tuesday, they said the first meeting of the group held in Quetta on Sunday had decided that any move to change the route of the corridor would be resisted.

Those who spoke on the occasion included Maulana Qadir Luni of JUI-Ideological, Rashid Nasar of Awami National Party, Shams Mengal of Balochistan Muttihada Mahaz, Reza Wakil of Hazara Democratic Party, Maulana Hakim of JUI-Sami, Abdul Kabir Shakir of Jammat-i-Islami, Amaruddin Agha of Anjuman-i-Tajran Balochistan and former district mayor of Quetta Rahim Kakar.

Published in Dawn February 18th , 2015

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