ISLAMABAD: Faced with heightened domestic and foreign concerns, the government promised on Friday to give its version of what is happening in Balochistan to the National Assembly next week.
The offer for a briefing came from Interior Minister Rehman Malik after two lawmakers from the province — one from the ruling party and the other from the opposition — warned of dire consequences if alleged excesses by security authorities were not checked and in the wake of a US congressional hearing about alleged human rights violations there.
Humayun Aziz Kurd of the Pakistan People’s Party (PPP), in his second speech on Balochistan within three days, blamed security agencies for the perceived failure of the present government’s efforts to bring peace to the country’s largest bust least populated province and said he could not understand “why the army is against talks” (with insurgents) and “why the army is not accepting us”.
And then, Yaqoob Bizenjo of the Balochistan National Party-A, who said “Balochistan is burning today” with murdered people belonging to all nationalities — Baloch, Pakhtuns, Sindhis, Punjabis — asked Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani, who was present in the house, to state “whether you have any formula to bring peace there”.
While the prime minister preferred not to respond, the interior minister, who had made a statement about Balochistan earlier in the day in the Senate and promised a more detailed presentation to parliamentarians from the province next week, said he could give a similar briefing to the National Assembly, and agreed to a suggestion from Deputy Speaker Faisal Karim Kundi that a briefing to the lower house too be given next week.
But the minister repeated his condition that insurgents, who intensified their activities from their mountain hideouts after Baloch leader Nawab Akbar Khan Bugti’s killing in a 2006 military operation, must lay down arms before peace talks with them.
Mr Malik said nothing about Wednesday’s hearing by a subcommittee of the US House of Representatives in Washington where witnesses detailed alleged human rights violations, though the US government distanced itself from the event marked by talk of “self-determination” for the strategic province. But the issue had been agitated in the Senate on Thursday, with several senators accusing the United States of interference in Pakistan’s internal affairs.
The Supreme Court is also hearing a case about so-called “disappearances” of Baloch youths and nationalists mainly blamed on intelligence agencies.
In another development of the day, the government’s Constitution (Twentieth Amendment) Bill, which had been on the lower house agenda since the start of the present session on Feb 1 and had gripped national attention, quietly moved to the next week without any word about when exactly a new draft, possibly containing at least some of opposition demands, would be presented.
PPP chief whip Khursheed Ahmed Shah had told reporters on Thursday the matter would be taken to a special cabinet meeting “in a day or two” for possible approval of a new draft of the bill, which originally sought only validation of 28 by-elections to seats of both houses of parliament and provincial assemblies that were challenged before the Supreme Court for having been held when the Election Commission was not complete as required by the 18th Amendment, but which opposition says must include its amendments that it thinks will give more guarantees for future elections to be fair and free.
In the absence of an official announcement about calling the cabinet meeting, the deputy speaker, demonstrating an apparent fatigue over the issue, did not even repeat what he had been saying almost daily during the session that the bill was being deferred on the request of the minister in charge before adjourning the house until 5pm on Monday.
4:49 AM
Posted in: NATIONAL
