A separate Balochistan is not practical: CM

Raisani reiterates govt’s offer to hold talks with Baloch nationalist leaders.

QUETTA:


An independent Balochistan is not a practical proposition and will lead to bloodbath in the province, Chief Minister Nawab Aslam Raisani said on Thursday.


“We have to find a way out within the ambit of Pakistan and the 1940 Lahore resolution,” he said, while talking to a delegation of journalists at the CM Secretariat in Quetta.


Raisani added that the government is ready to hold talks with Baloch leaders, but they (nationalist leaders) continue to demand independence and refuse to budge. “But independence will come at the cost of bloodbath civil strife.”

He reiterated his earlier stand and said Baloch leaders should find a solution to the province’s problems within the framework of the 1940 resolution. “All rights of the people can be ascertained within the framework of one Pakistan,” he added.

“Political stability can not be achieved through war,” Raisani told journalists, adding that the state’s resources should be spent on economic welfare and not on wars.

In October, the prime minister had renewed his offer for talks with ‘angry baloch brothers.’ Following the prime minister’s proposal, a special parliamentary committee formed to address the violence in Karachi and Balochistan planned a visit to Quetta. “No more violence, it’s time to hold talks with our angry (Baloch) brothers,” the head of the committee Religious Affairs Minister Syed Khursheed Shah had said.

Published in The Express Tribune, November 4th, 2011. 
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