Top leaders' huddle useless due to military's 'short-sightedness': Pak editorial

Islamabad, May 30 (ANI): Referring to a recent meeting of top political and military leaders aimed at finding a solution to the Balochistan issue, an editorial in a Pakistan daily has said that with the military seeming bent upon continuing with its short-sighted, repressive actions, the so-called high powered meeting would do no good.

Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani, admitting that the number of missing persons in Balochistan is going up, called a high level meeting to discuss the issue, which was attended by Army Chief General Ashfaq Pervez Kayani, heads of law enforcement agencies, federal and provincial officials, the editorial stated.

Some media reports ascribe this sudden 'waking up' to the issue of an otherwise somnolent government to Chief Justice Iftikhar Mohammad Chaudhry's startling remarks during the last hearing of the missing persons case that if the PM is not interested in tackling the serious problem, the constitutional provisions will kick in, including the possibility of the imposition of an emergency, it stated.

According to the editorial, it jolted Gilani and the powers that be to at least be seen to be addressing the problem seriously. However, what may or may not come out of this high-powered meeting remains to be seen, it added.

It said the basic reason is that when Kayani is consulted on a problem for which his military and its various arms are fairly and squarely blamed, unless the military changes its unilateral policy of 'kill and dump' in the province, what hope is there that a powerless federal and provincial Balochistan government can make a difference?

The editorial added that on the very day of the PM's interview, three missing persons bodies, tortured, strangled and stuffed in gunny bags were recovered from Quetta. Media reports speculate that these were the same three men whose relatives had appeared before the SC to record their statements about the abduction of the three from Quetta last month.

Police officials had presented a video of the abduction incident showing people dressed in Frontier Corps (FC) uniforms bundling the men away, it said.

The DG FC, however, blatantly denied to the court that these were his personnel, claiming they were impostors, without a shred of evidence to back up his claim. Now the dumped bodies of the same three missing persons are meant to send a familiar message to the relatives of the rest of the hundreds if not thousands of missing persons: shut up or be prepared to receive the dead bodies of your missing relatives, it concluded. (ANI)