NEW YORK, April 2: Baloch leader Nawab Akbar has warned in an interview with an American newspaper that “the government would be foolish not to negotiate with the senior tribal leaders to settle the conflict in Balochistan”. He asserted: “If we are removed from the scene, I can guarantee the government will have a heck of a time from the younger generation, because they are more extreme.”

In a interview with New York Times correspondent — published on Sunday— at a remote part of the province, “camping out under the stars with his loyal tribesmen,” Mr Bugti said: “We are fighting the government to show we are not happy with you and you should leave our homeland.”

“I have had a good and full life,” he told the Times. “It is better to die quickly in the mountains than slowly in your bed.”

Calling for the acceptance of Baloch people’s “national rights”, Mr Bugti left open the possibility of talks with the government. However, his fellow rebel leader Balach Marri was sceptical about the exercise.

“They are not worth sitting with at the table,” Marri said. “The general (President Pervez Musharraf) keeps offering peanuts when my rights are at stake. We are not against negotiations, but only negotiations that are worthwhile.”

Mr Bugti, according to the extensive report on the situation in Balochistan, offered his own grim prognosis. “I don’t see it ending,” he was quoted as saying.

One of his grandsons, Brahamdagh, 25, is commanding the Bugti resistance fighters and he appeared silently every so often to brief his grandfather. He took to the mountains in 2002 with just 50 to 60 men.

Brahamdagh contended that he now had more than 2,000 fighters in Dera Bugti and thousands more civilian helpers. He said the Marris had roughly the same number in Kohlu. In addition, small cells of fighters are in every district of the province, he told the newspaper.

“The military government has imposed military rule and this has forced the Baloch to defend their land and resources against the might of the armed forces of Pakistan assembled in our area,” Mr Bugti observed.

The Times correspondent who toured the area for 24 hours on camel and horse back and on foot , says: “One visit makes it clear that, despite official denials, the government is waging a full-scale military campaign here. Rebel leaders say they have several thousand men under arms, fighting what they estimate are 23,000 Pakistani troops.”

“This fight is altogether separate from the Taliban insurgency on Afghanistan’s border or the Shia-Sunni violence that sporadically flares in and around the provincial capital, Quetta, and it threatens to dwarf the nation’s other conflicts.”

“This is the other front of Pakistan’s widening civil unrest, not the tribal areas along the Afghan border where the United States would like the government to press a campaign against Islamic militants, but the restive province of Balochistan, home to an intensifying insurgency,” the Times said.