By IANS,
Islamabad: The Awami National Party (ANP) should give up its “pro-India” agenda and support the construction of the Kalabagh Dam in Punjab province which will solve the shortage of water and power in Pakistan, an editorial in a leading Urdu paper said Saturday.
The editorial in Nawa-i-waqt said that the “blot on the character” of ANP’s previous leaders (among them Frontier Gandhi Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan’s son Khan Abdul Wali Khan) was well known to all and there was no better time for the party to give up its “pro-India agenda” and champion Pakistan’s interests which would “pay it political dividends too”.
On the opposition in Sindh to the dam, the editorial alleged that “the enemy” (India) had distributed (Pakistani) “Rs.6 arab” (Rs.6 billion) through its spy agency Research and Analysis Wing (RAW) to various groups in the provinces to oppose the project. It also accused “the enemy” from blocking river waters since 1962 in an attempt to parch the lands of Pakistan.
The Kalabagh Dam, to be built on the Indus river in Mianwali district of Punjab province, has no India angle per se. However, its opponents in the other three provinces have been labelled “Indian agents” for their stand.
Referring to the slanging match between an ANP member and the Pakistan Muslim League-Quaid Tariq Azeem who called for a consensus on the dam during the budget discussion in the senate Thursday, the editorial said that no politics should be played on projects of national significance.
Praising the support by members of the Pakistan Muslim League (Nawaz) to Azeem while the ANP had been supported by the ruling Pakistan People’s Party and the Jamaat-e-Ulema-Fazlur, the editorial dismissed as a “pack of lies” the ANP’s claim that the dam will lead to submergence of Nowshera town of the Khyber-Pakhtoonwa province.