LORALAI: The Government of Balochistan has refused to provide any land to the governments of the United States of America and the United Kingdom to establish consulates in the province, said a top government minister on Saturday.
Maulana Abdul Wasay, the senior provincial minister who belongs to the pro-Taliban Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam (JUI-Fazal), told a press conference in Loralai district that the Balochistan government had refused to allot any land to the US and UK governments to establish consulates in the southwestern province which shares borders with Iran and Afghanistan.
Iran had previously expressed its concerns that the US consulate in Quetta maybe used against it, a charge that was vehemently denied and ruled out by Balochistan chief minister Nawab Mohammad Aslam Raisani.
“There is no Taliabn Shura or the presence of Al-Qaeda leadership in Quetta,” said the senior minister, “this is simply a pretext to make Quetta a dumping point of weapons.”
He said his party, the JUI, would not let the “conspiracies against Pakistan” succeed under which the US, Israel and some other western countries wanted to dismember Pakistan by the year 2015.
The JUI has been strongly resenting the US plan to establish a “small consulate” in Balochistan which was announced by the US Ambassador to Pakistan, Anne W. Patterson, during her last visit to the province. The JUI believes that the establishment of a US consulate would lead to further instability in the region as it would allegedly be used for Black Water activities inside Balochistan, fan the feelings of hatred among different ethnic communities and strengthen separatist views against Pakistan.
It was the first time that such a top level government official made a disclosure about denial of land to the US authorities to establish a consulate in Balochistan. Nonetheless, no official statement or handout has been issued to officially confirm the government position (of refusing to provide space to the US government for setting up a consulate in Quetta).
Some sources said that the US authorities were still waiting for formal approval from the ministry of foreign affairs to set up a consulate in Balochistan.
Meanwhile, there were no prior reports made public about similar interests by the British government to establish a consulate in Balochistan until the disclosure of the news by the senior minister in his press conference of Saturday.
While the progressive people in Balochistan had widely welcomed the US official decision to establish a consulate in Balochistan, the religious right wing, which is supportive to Taliban, used the recent Facebook controversy to muster enormous anti-US feelings during its protests against the popular social network to link the caricature row with the setting up of a US consulate in Quetta.
Likewise, the provincial chief of Jamaat-e-Islami Abdul Matheen Akhwanzada has also opposed the construction of a US consulate in Balochistan saying that a consulate was not needed in Balochistan. It would, he charged, be used to promote the activities of Black Water for which several vacant homes have been rented across Pakistan.
He said in a press conference the other day that the US government wanted to manage and monitor operations in Kandahar, Afghanistan, through its proposed consulate being established in Quetta.
http://thebalochhal.com/2010/07/balochistan-denies-land-for-us-uk-consulates-senior-minister/
No comments:
Post a Comment