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Pakistan needs urgent US help: Kerry |
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Updated at:
0545
PST, Thursday, February 26, 2009 |
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WASHINGTON: Influential US Senator John Kerry called Wednesday for an urgent boost in Western aid to Pakistan, warning "time is running out" to help the nuclear-armed US ally's civilian government survive.
Kerry, who wants to triple US non-military aid to Pakistan to 7.5 billion dollars over five years, also endorsed a new US think tank report calling for an immediate increase on top of that amounting to four to five billion dollars per year from Washington and its European partners.
"Time is running out," the Massachusetts senator and 2004 Democratic White House hopeful said at a press conference to back the Atlantic Council's call for a new, comprehensive approach to Western relations with Pakistan.
The council estimates that Pakistan President Asif Ali Zardari's government has somewhere between six and 12 months to enact successful security and economic policies or face the prospect of collapse.
"There is still time for us to be able to help the new civilian government, turn around its economy, stabilize the political system, and address the insurgency" festering in eastern tribal lands on the Afghan border, said Kerry.
US lawmakers seem headed towards a bitter debate over US policy towards its frontline ally, amid charges that Islamabad is not doing enough to combat Islamic militants holed up in its lawless northwest bordering Afghanistan.
Pro-Taliban militants on Tuesday declared an indefinite ceasefire in the Swat Valley after the government agreed to impose Islamic sharia law -- the goal of a bloody two-year campaign in the erstwhile ski resort area.
"In Pakistan, we can no longer suffer the duplicity of that government," when it comes to fighting Islamists, Democratic Representative George Miller warned Monday.
Congressional aides said lawmakers were closely watching the outcome of US President Barack Obama's reviews of policies towards the region and the result of three-way talks among Washington, Kabul, and Islamabad.
Kerry, who chairs the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said he would introduce legislation "in the next few weeks" aimed at getting 7.5 billion dollars in non-military US aid to Pakistan over five years and call for the same levels over the five years after that.
Kerry said he and Senator Richard Lugar, the panel's top Republican, were still "tweaking" the legislation but would push for "swift passage" after introducing it.
Kerry, who met this week with senior Pakistani and Afghan military and diplomatic officials during their visits to Washington, said the new monies were critical to victory on what he described as "the central, crucial front" in the US-led global campaign against terrorism.
The council report said that about three billion dollars of the four to five billion it called for would go to economic and social sectors of Pakistan's battered economy, with about another one billion to its beleaguered security forces.
The monies would come on top of IMF commitments and other aid offers, and should come from Washington and its European partners, it said.
Kerry and former senator Chuck Hagel of Nebraska, the council's new chairman, stressed that efforts to defeat Islamists in Pakistan and neighboring Afghanistan required help for the people of both strife-torn countries.
Hagel drew a parallel to the Vietnam War -- in which both he and Kerry fought -- and warned that "if you lose the people, you lose everything. We cannot lose the people of Afghanistan, the people of Pakistan."
The US State Department, meanwhile, gave Pakistan a "poor" grade in its annual global report on human rights. |
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ISSN 1563-9479 
