Cabinet panel ‘not active’ in Balochistan talks

Lashkari Raisani, Jan Jamali and Amanullah Gichki reject claim that committee negotiated with Akhtar Mengal.

ISLAMABAD:

Three prominent Baloch leaders have rejected the government’s claim last week that a cabinet committee headed by Defence Minister Naveed Qamar held meetings with former provincial chief minister Sardar Akhtar Mengal and was ‘actively involved’ in negotiations with Baloch leaders.

“A special cabinet committee is in negotiation with Sardar Akhtar Mengal and other Baloch leaders,” Parliamentary Secretary Khurram Jahangir Wattoo told the National Assembly on Friday.

Nawabzada Lashkari Khan Raisani, who had resigned as a senator and president of the Balochistan chapter of the Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP), Jan Jamali, the former deputy chairman of senate, and Amanullah Gichki, a former PPP federal minister, told The Express Tribune that the special committee had not contributed enough to achieve peace in Balochistan.

Jamali added that the cabinet committee did not meet Mengal, even though he was in Islamabad to appear before the Supreme Court. He also said that Federal Minister for Science and Technology Mir Changez Khan Jamali, who is also a member of the cabinet committee, met Mengal – but not in an official capacity.

“Since Changez Jamali is from Balochistan, he regarded it essential, in accordance with Baloch traditions, to make a courtesy call on Mengal,” Jan Jamali said. He was also of the view that Mengal’s return to Pakistan from Dubai, where he was living in self-imposed exile for over two years, was the result of a deal with the ‘people at the helm of affairs’.

Lashkari, who is highly critical of the committee’s performance so far, said that it was a futile exercise. The committee has only visited Quetta once, in August, since its inception. It has held no meetings with any notable Baloch leaders to work towards settling some of the most burning issues. Most of its meetings have been with members of the provincial administration or security forces. It also held talks with Pakhtunkhwa Milli Awami Party leaders and some Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam-Fazl (JUI-F) leaders, but avoided meeting the families of Baloch missing persons.

Lashkari, however, welcomed Mengal’s six point charter for a solution to the Balochistan conundrum. “The charter has opened the door of negotiations with Baloch leaders,” the former senator said, adding, however: “The charter is not the solution of the problem but it is a ray of hope.”

Gichki, a harsh critic of the handling of Balochistan by intelligence agencies and the federal government, rejected the parliamentary secretary’s claim as well. He added, “The Balochistan crisis cannot be resolved with the formations of such committees who have no powers to get their recommendations implemented ... It is a joke with the people of Balochistan to form a cabinet committee every year that fails to produce any results.”

Gichki said Mengal’s six-points were practically workable. Without naming anyone, he said those who are demanding the withdrawal of Frontier Corps (FC) from Balochistan are not speaking honestly. “The FC is doing an excellent job maintaining law and order in that province. Those people should know that the FC is implementing the task it had been entrusted with. They should criticise the army majors and colonels who are responsible for policies against the interest of the Baloch people.”

Defence Minister Qamar was unavailable for comments despite repeated attempts to contact him. One of his aides, however, speaking on the condition of anonymity, told The Express Tribune that the cabinet committee is ‘actively involved’ in completing the task entrusted to it by Premier Raja Pervaiz Ashraf.

Balochistan’s PPP President Mir Sadiq Umrani, who is also a minister in the Balochistan coalition cabinet, said the committee’s work was still in progress and its achievements could only be judged after it submitted a final report. He added, however: “I don’t know about those Baloch leaders with whom the committee had been meeting.”

edited by heba islam

Published in The Express Tribune, October 9^th, 2012.