PESHAWAR, Sept 1: Awami National Party president Asfandyar Wali Khan has said that August 26 will be remembered as the darkest day in the history of the country because of the killing of Nawab Akbar Bugti in a military operation.

In a statement, he said that the target killing of Nawab Akbar Bugti was a bad omen and would intensify the political polarisation in the country.

He deplored that some ministers were terming him terrorist, whereas President Gen Pervez Musharraf was labelling the operation a success.

He said that some observers were of the opinion that the conflict in Balochistan was nothing more than a tussle between two egotists — a tribal chief and a uniformed president — while others term the crisis a manifestation of the fight between tradition and modernity.

However, he said that the crisis in Balochistan was much deeper, adding that a majority of the people of Balochistan might not be educated but not ill-informed about the actual situation. The sudden realisation of the federal government that Balochistan had been ignored in the past and therefore regarded the construction of Gwadar port and military cantonments as a solution to address all the past and present problems of the people of Balochistan was logically incorrect, he added.

Mr Khan said he wondered why the federal government was reluctant to give the due share of Balochistan as its gas royalty. The construction of Gwadar port, he said, was a prelude to the enforcement of a policy of ethnic supremacy of Punjab and an attempt to turn the Baloch people into minority in the province.

He said that it was astonishing that the central government was trying to develop the province through establishment of military cantonments, rather than by building schools, hospitals, roads, factories and other infrastructure.

He said that when the custodians of the Constitution were flouting it, then others should not be blamed. The same sense of deprivation prevailed among the people of the smaller federating units, he said, adding that the NWFP had been deprived of its share in the net hydel profit.

The ruling class, he said, was repeating the same mistake in the NWFP with regard to the oil and gas reserves in Karak and Kohat districts.

The reserves were being piped out to Punjab and Sindh but the Frontier province had not received any royalty on gas and oil so far.

Likewise, the central government collected an excise duty of Rs38 billion annually on tobacco crop in the NWFP, but the federal government did not collect any excise duty on cash crops produced in other provinces.

Mr Khan lamented that those raising voice for getting their constitutional rights were being killed, like Mr Bugti.

The ANP chief appealed to all the democratic forces to get united on a single platform to establish true democracy in the country and save it from the 1971-like debacle that resulted in the dismemberment of the country.