Government plans to hold dialogue with ‘aggrieved Balochs’: Fawad Chaudhary
Monitoring Desk :
Federal Minister for Information and Broadcasting, Fawad Hussain Chaudhary has said the government was working on a plan to initiate dialogue with ‘aggrieved Balochs’ who are not linked with India.
The Minister’s comments have come a day after the Prime Minister, Imran Khan announced he is ‘considering talks’ with Baloch militants. Addressing a press conference in Islamabad after a meeting of the federal cabinet, he clarified that the criteria for those who were “directly linked to India” or were involved in terrorism would be different. “You will see that Balochistan will soon become a hub of peace,” he said.
The minister said that peace in the province was important to the government because Balochistan was central to the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC). “The prime minister’s tour of Gwadar yesterday was evidence of the importance we give to CPEC,” he added.
“It was the second-biggest network after [the one operated by Indian spy] Kulbhushan Jadhav which has been exposed in Pakistan. We have also broken the Indian network in Balochistan with great success.”
Chaudhry said that people who were part of the network had been apprehended to a “large extent”. “I am hopeful that there will be betterment in the peace situation in the country,” he added.
The minister made similar remarks earlier in the day when he said that the “Indian terrorist network” operating in Balochistan had been dismantled and that now the government will set an agenda for dialogue with Baloch nationalists.