The new chief minister of Balochistan province said Wednesday his government will hold talks with armed rebel tribesmen to bring peace to the insurgency-hit region in Pakistan's southwest. Nawab Mohammed Aslam Raisani told the provincial legislature in Quetta that “brute force” cannot resolve Balochistan's problems. Raisani's comments, televised live by local stations, were a rebuke to President Pervez Musharraf's policy of using the military to quell a years-long tribal insurgency in the province. Meanwhile, the new government in North West Frontier Province has set up a ministerial committee to prepare for negotiations with militants in the violence-hit Swat Valley, the daily Dawn reported Wednesday. It quoted provincial Information Minister Sardar Hussain Babak as saying that jirgas - councils of tribal elders - will be used to resolve the issue of militancy peacefully. In recent years, armed insurgents have been blamed for attacks against security forces, railroads, gas wells and gas pipelines in Balochistan, which borders Afghanistan. They have been pressing demands for the central government to increase royalties for resources, such as natural gas, extracted in the province. Security forces' operations against ethnic-Baloch rebels in Balochistan have provoked widespread resentment against Musharraf's rule, which swelled following the killing in August 2006 of tribal chieftain Nawab Akbar Bugti. Bugti, blamed by authorities for keeping a private militia and orchestrating attacks against the government, died when his cave hideout collapsed during a military raid. “If somebody thinks that they can resolve the issues, the burning issues, by brute force, they are wrong,” Raisani said after he was elected unopposed as the new chief minister, the province's top elected government official. __
