KHUZDAR: Thebaloch Hal team: Balochistan chief minister Nawab Mohammad Aslam Raisani met on Saturday with veteran Baloch nationalist leader and the first ever elected chief minister of Balochistan Sardar Attaullah Mengal at his native town of Wadh in Khuzdar district.
It was the first meeting of Nawab Raisani with a prominent Baloch nationalist leader since coming into power at a time when the Pakistan People’s Party-led coalition government in Balochistan is making efforts to reconcile with Baloch nationalist leaders. Aged Mengal is the patron-in-chief of the Balochistan National Party (BNP) and the father of Sardar Akhtar Megal, a former chief minister and the central president of the BNP.
However, chief minister Raisani told journalists that it was not a political meeting but a part of tribal interactions as a part of which he had come to inquire about the health of the veteran Baloch nationalist leader. The BNP had rejected the recently announced Balochistan package and refused to negotiate with the government.
Mengal was the first ever elected chief minister of Balochistan. When his elected government was toppled by Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto, former prime minister of Pakistan, in 1973, a military operation was unleashed in Balochistan which culminated in the killing of around fifteen thousand Balochs. In response, the Balochs waged a resistance fight against the Pakistan military. Mengal’s BNP also quit its seats from the Balochistan Assembly and the National Assembly in protest in September 2006 over the killing of former Balochistan governor and chief minister Nawab Mohammad Akbar Khan Bugti. Subsequently, Mengal’s son, Sardar Akhtar Mengal, was detained by Pervez Musharraf along with hundreds of BNP leaders and activists. Mengal was produced in a court in an iron cage which led to severe reaction by his supporters. The junior Mengal was released from jail after the Pakistan People’s Party came into power and announced a process of reconciliation with the Baloch leaders.
Regarding his meeting on Saturday with Sardar Aattullah Mengal, chief minister Raisani said he had come to inquire about the health of Sardar Mengal who had had a prominent role in the political history of Balochistan.
“Our government is trying to present Balochistan’s case objectively before the federal government and endeavoring to secure the rights of all provinces as envisaged in the 1940 Resolution of Lahore,” said Raisani.
The meeting between the Baloch chief minister and the veteran nationalist leader lasted for several hours. Balochistan’s finance minister Mir Asim Kurd Gillo and Abdul Rehman Mengal, the provincial minister for mines and mineral were also present during the meeting.
When approached for more details about the meeting between the two prominent Baloch leaders, BNP’s central information secretary Agha Hassan Baloch expressed his ignorance about the meeting and said he did not know anything about the meeting.
However, another BNP leader told Baloch Hal that President Asif Ali Zardari had wished to call on the Baloch leader during his recent visit to Lasbela district as the native area of the Baloch leader fell close to the area where he had gone to inaugurate a dam. When requested for the meeting, the Baloch leader had turned refused to meet ‘any government official’. Thus, President Zardari gave up the plans to meet the Baloch leader but another request for meeting was sent by chief minister Raisani to meet in the tribal capacity.
“It was purely a tribal meeting and no political issues were discussed during the meeting,” said the BNP central leader who requested anonymity.