Islamabad, April 9:

The new chief minister of Baluchistan province said today 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 Baluchistan’s problems.

Raisani’s comments, televised live by local stations, were a rebuke of President Pervez Musharraf’s policy of using the military to quell a yearslong tribal insurgency in the province.

Meanwhile, the new government in North West Frontier Province has set up a committee of Cabinet ministers to prepare for negotiations with militants in the violence-hit Swat Valley, the daily Dawn reported today.

Dawn quoted provincial Information Minister Sardar Hussain Babak as saying that jirgas - councils of tribal elders - will be used to resolve the issue peacefully.

In recent years, armed insurgents have been blamed for attacks against security forces, railroads, gas wells and gas pipelines in Baluchistan, 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-Baluch rebels in Baluchistan have provoked widespread resentment against Musharraf’s rule, which swelled following the killing in August 2006 of tribal chieftain Nawab Akbar Bugti. He is blamed by authorities for keeping a private militia and orchestrating attacks against the government, died when his cave hide-out 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.