PESHAWAR, Dec 27: Various political parties and groups have assured their participation in the anti-Kalabagh rally of the Awami National Party at Jehangira, Nowshera, on December 29. This was stated by the ANP’s central vice president and chairman Anti-Kalabagh Front Ghulam Ahmed Bilour at a news conference in Peshawar Press Club on Tuesday.

He asked people from all walks of life to attend the rally to show their unity against a project which was aimed at destroying fertile lands of the province.

He said the Pakistan Peoples Party-Parliamentarian, Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz, Jamaat-e-Islami, Jamiat Ulema Islam-Fazal, PPP-Sherpao and various organisations of lawyers, doctors, engineers and students had ensured their participation in the rally.

He said Mehmood Khan Achakzai from Balochistan, Afzal Khan Lala, Rasool Bakhsh Paleejo, Qadir Magsi from Sindh, and other nationalist leaders would also address the rally.

He said that friends and advisors of General Musharraf were pushing him towards a point-of-no-return.

He said its was a technical as well as a political issue and the assemblies of the NWFP, Sindh and Balochistan had already rejected the project through their unanimous resolutions.

He said the first resolution against the Kalabagh dam was passed in 1985 by NWFP Assembly, the second in Aftab Ahmed Khan Sherpao’s tenure and the third in Mir Afzal Khan’s tenure. He said all the parties and independent MPAs had backed these resolutions.

Mr Bilour said his party was not against production of cheap electricity or big water reservoirs and time and again had proposed to successive governments to build non-controversial Basha, Katzara and other dams instead of Kalabagh dam which was supported only by the Punjab.