Gilani condemns US resolution

PAKISTAN: Pakistan's Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani on Saturday condemned a resolution introduced by a US lawmaker calling for self-determination in restive Baluchistan Province.

“This resolution violates our sovereignty and we condemn it,” Gilani told reporters in a televised interaction with media in the port city of Karachi.

Republican Representative Dana Rohrabacher said that Baluchis -- divided now among Pakistan, Iran and Afghanistan -- should be allowed to choose their status.

Baluchistan province in southwest Pakistan suffers from violence linked to the Taliban, sectarian extremists and Baluch rebels, who rose up in 2004 for political autonomy and a greater share of the region's oil, gas and mineral deposits.

A resolution Friday sponsored by Rohrabacher and two fellow Republicans said the Baluchi people “have the right to self-determination and to their own sovereign country, and they should be afforded the opportunity to choose their own status.” There was no sign of significant support for the proposal by Rohrabacher, a longtime critic of Pakistan's government who sought unsuccessfully to cut off all aid after US forces found and killed Osama bin Laden on Pakistani soil.

Pakistani Foreign Minister Hina Rabbani Khar described it as an “isolated move by a few individuals”.

“It was aimed to create distrust between the peoples of the two countries,” she said in a statement.

Khar expressed the hope that “this latest tendentious move will not be allowed to sail through the House by a vast majority of US Congressmen who continued to support friendly relations between the two countries”.

Pakistan similarly accused the United States of meddling in its affairs after Rohrabacher, who heads an investigative subcommittee of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, recently called a hearing on Baluchistan.

Karachi,Sunday,AFP