QUETTA, Nov 27: Former corps commander Lt-Gen (retd) Abdul Qadir Baloch has urged the government to resolve the Balochistan issue through talks and avoid using force which is alienating the Baloch youth.

He said provinces should get the authority to exercise control over their mineral resources and the federating units should contribute a part of their revenue to the centre.

Gen Abdul Qadir, who served as governor of Balochistan under the present government, was speaking at the oath-taking ceremony of the Quetta Union of Journalists at the Idara-i-Saqafat here on Monday. Balochistan Assembly Speaker Jamal Shah Kakar was chief guest.

The retired corps commander said that Balochistan with 13 members in the 342-member National Assembly could not protect its rights.

Therefore, the provinces should be given equal representation in the assembly.

He said he did not support the army rule because it was dangerous for the country. But, he added, political groups were involved in toppling civilian governments and clearing way for military rulers.

He also accused politicians, journalists and the judiciary of encouraging army generals to run affairs of the country, and said that on every occasion politicians welcomed army generals, journalists praised the army rule and judiciary endorsed the military takeover under the “doctrine of necessity”.

“Nawab Akbar Bugti was a respectable Baloch leader and he was badly treated but no-one could deny the fact that in 1973, the PPP government launched a military operation and Nawab Bugti supported the oppression in which hundreds of innocent Balochs were killed,” he said.

He claimed that political governments had done nothing for the development of Balochistan and military governments had played a better role in this regard by launching development activities and providing facilities to people in the province.

Gen Abdul Qadir regretted that governors and chief secretaries were often imposed on the province from outside, which showed that the federal government did not trust the Baloch and Pakhtuns of the province to become constitutional heads of the province.

Similarly, he said, personnel of the Frontier Corps did not belong to Balochistan; there was no Baloch diplomat or federal secretary in Islamabad and the province had no representation in hundreds of corporations.

He said the people of the province were not against the Gwadar port but they had certain reservations about development activities in Gwadar. The government, he said, must address the reservations.

He stressed the need for changing the “system of exploitation”, saying it had created disharmony and misunderstanding between provinces and the centre.

The government should recognise the right of the provinces over their resources, he said.

Speaker Jamal said that the corrupt among the educated people – whether they were politicians, doctors, bureaucrats, judges, lawyers or civil servants – were responsible for the current state of affairs in the country. He said the illiterate were sincere people, but they had lost faith in the system and believed that the educated were the source of their problems.