BAHAWALNAGAR: Prime Minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto today [Nov 4] said that during his recent visit to Moscow he had asked the Soviet leaders to prevail upon Afghanistan not to interfere in our internal affairs. He had further urged them to make it clear to Kabul that she should restrain herself from coming to the help of NAP leaders who were out to create subversion in Baluchistan. … He maintained in unequivocal terms that the NAP leaders, who had engineered insurgency in Baluchistan, were seeking support from Afghanistan. The saboteurs who were responsible for bomb explosions were being trained in a camp outside Kabul and some of those, who had been arrested … had admitted that they had been trained in Afghanistan.

He said that he had informed the Kremlin authorities that the Pakistan Government had crushed insurgency in Baluchistan and the situation was very much within her control. … He believed that the talk of massacre in Baluchistan was nothing but … mischievous propaganda — the factual position being that some tribals had been misled by those who had opposed the establishment of Pakistan and were out to harm its integrity even now.

Published in Dawn, November 5th, 2024