QUETTA, Jan 19: Jamhoori Watan Party chief Nawab Akbar Khan Bugti has said he will continue his struggle for the rights of the Baloch people. Talking to journalists in Dera Bugti on Thursday, he said that Balochistan was not the issue of a few sardars and President Pervez Musharraf was either not aware of the actual situation in the province or he was deliberately misleading people.

He said the assertion made by the president in his speech on Tuesday that the Balochistan issue pertained to personal interests of a few sardars was wrong. The Baloch national issue, he added, had been there since 1948 when the Khan of Kalat was forced to make his state part of Pakistan.

He said a feeling of deprivation among the Baloch and military operations against them had complicated the issue and no serious efforts were made to resolve it. He said the rulers had always tried to suppress the Baloch national struggle through state apparatus but the problem had persisted.

Nawab Bugti said none of the proposals presented to the parliamentary committee pertained to personal interests of any sardar. All of them were about the rights of the Baloch people.

He said the president’s allegation that he and his allies were against development was false and the only road between Dera Bugti and Sui had been built when he was the chief minister. He said there were 300 primary, 27 middle and 20 high schools and an intermediate college in Dera Bugti and he had not obstructed their construction.

The JWP leader said he was not against development but he opposed cantonments which were being built to occupy Baloch resources and subjugate local people.

He denied his party’s involvement in bomb blasts in Karachi and Lahore and alleged that the explosions were carried out by intelligence agencies to prepare grounds for action against government’s opponents.

About allegations regarding private militia, Nawab Bugti said: “We have no such organization as our strength are the Baloch for whose national rights we are struggling.”

The JWP leader alleged that security forces were shelling different areas in his district every day, because of which most of the local people had moved to Kachhi, Jhatpat, Nasirabad, Rohri, Hyderabad, Nawabshah and Quetta.

KALPAR CHIEF: Wadera Khan Mohammad Kalpar, chief of the Kalpar clan of the Bugti tribe, has accused the government of trying to divide the Kalpars in order to protect Jalal Khan Kalpar, an absconder in a case about murder of his son Farman Ali Kalpar.