IF he maintains the stance he took on Wednesday, PML-N chief Nawaz Sharif has made an all-parties conference on Balochistan almost impossible. The party's preconditions for the conference are clearly political in nature; if the APC is put on hold to wait for arrests in the Nawab Akbar Bugti case and the recovery of the missing Baloch, it will not happen any time soon and certainly not during this government's tenure. Meanwhile, it was Mr Sharif himself who called for an APC earlier this year, and of late he has taken up the Baloch cause, and especially the current government's failure to do much about it, with great gusto. A senior JUI-F leader took a similar line on Wednesday when he said that detainees need to be released before an APC is called. It is true that the current administration has failed to make progress in addressing Baloch concerns; in fact, the dead bodies of missing people began turning up during its tenure. But despite the solidarity with the Baloch that political leaders of all stripes have started touting of late, the politicisation of the issue calls into question their own commitment to resolving it.

Their stonewalling could not have come at a worse time. Bramdagh Bugti's public statement on Wednesday calling for an independent Balochistan and welcoming foreign assistance for that cause points to the urgent need for dialogue. Unfortunately the situation has deteriorated to the point where a number of prominent nationalist leaders have said they will not attend the APC, which would defeat the purpose of the conference. Even the interior minister's decision to quash all cases against separatist leaders may not end the disillusionment. What opposition parties could have offered to do, if they were genuinely concerned, was to try and bring some of these leaders to the table, or at least to attend the conference with the goal of developing a strategy for somehow initiating dialogue.

There are legitimate questions about how much an APC will achieve; in the past such conferences have resulted in watered-down resolutions that are designed to please a wide cross-section of stakeholders and are forgotten as soon as the conferences are wrapped up. And in the case of Balochistan in particular, words have not been backed up with action. But this is also an issue on which a face-to-face exchange of views would itself be an important step forward. Over the next few days the focus of politicians across the spectrum should be to backtrack on their initial snubbing and find ways to bring Baloch leaders to the table.