US administration makes urgent aid plea for IDPs

[masijames]

WASHINGTON: The US administration urged Congress on Tuesday to provide immediate assistance to Pakistan to deal with a crisis situation caused by the displacement of more than a million people from their homes in the NWFP

Also on Tuesday, senior US officials met at the White House to decide how to rush emergency aid to Pakistan to help it deal with this situation.

Separately, the administration is urging Congress to release $497 million of emergency economic assistance to Pakistan, hoping to make the lawmakers endorse the request as early as possible.

‘Frankly, I don’t really trust what I hear from a situation like that until the dust of battle has settled, but one thing is clear: 900,000 refugees have been registered with the UN in that area, and we have a major, major refugee crisis,’ US special envoy Richard Holbrooke told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.

Mr Holbrooke told the panel during a hearing on the situation in Pakistan that senior Obama aides met at the White House on Tuesday to rush emergency assistance to Islamabad. The US, he said, had already provided over $57 million for this crisis from emergency funds.

FM BROADCAST
The White House also discussed a proposal to counter radio broadcasts by extremist clerics in Swat and to jam their transmission.

President Obama has already approved the suggestion to jam their broadcasts and to fund counter-broadcasts in Pashto and Urdu.

The US administration’s special envoy for Pakistan and Afghanistan said he was not in a position to say how the military offensive in Swat was going because he had not yet received an authentic report from the field.

‘I would welcome any suggestions or advice you have on this, because since our national security interests are so at stake and we look like we’re heading for about 1 million to 1,300,000 refugees, we should not ignore that,’ Mr Holbrooke told the lawmakers.

ALL-PARTY CONFERENCE
The US envoy welcomed Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani’s decision to call an all-party conference to discuss the situation in Swat and the adjacent valleys, noting that other political parties in Pakistan also had welcomed this suggestion.

Mr Holbrooke noted that recently the PML-N and PPP agreed to continue their coalition government in Punjab, which has 60 per cent of the country’s population.

‘I think that’s a big step forward towards the kind of national unity that’s wanted,’ he added.

Ambassador Holbrooke agreed with the committee’s chairman Senator John Kerry that Pakistan was not a failed state, although it faced many political, economic and social problems.

Stressing the need to strengthen democracy in Pakistan, Mr Holbrooke said: ‘Another military coup, another military takeover, another military intervention would be very much against the interests of the United States and, above all, the people of Pakistan. And every public opinion poll shows overwhelming desire for democracy to succeed.’

But he warned that a sharp division between PML-N and PPP was ‘a big anomaly’, noting that in the period that led to the removal of Gen. Musharraf, they formed an alliance and then they split apart.

‘So before we throw up our hands and assume that Pakistan is, ‘falling apart’, let’s recognise that with a lot of encouragement from their friends, including this committee, you can see the signs that Pakistan’s political effort is knitting together somewhat compared to where it was a few weeks ago.’

Mr Holbrooke noted that 74 per cent of the population in Pakistan supported the Swat deal very strongly, but the Taliban violated it and used it as an excuse to keep moving east. That created a ‘kind of a near panic’ in Pakistan and caused the Pakistani army to launch a major offensive.

TRILATERAL ACCORD
Ambassador Holbrooke also told the Senate committee that during last week’s trilateral summit in Washington, the US, Pakistan and Afghanistan made the following decisions: .Afghanistan and Pakistan signed a memorandum of understanding committing their countries to achieving a transit trade agreement by the end of this year.
• Afghanistan and Pakistan agreed to continue the cross-border Jirga process to be held after the Afghan elections.

• Afghanistan and Pakistan committed to opening two Border Coordination Centres in 2009, one in Afghanistan and the other in Pakistan.

• The US, Afghanistan and Pakistan plan to increase cooperation on agricultural development and research, as well as launching a Regional Infrastructure and Trade Development initiative to accelerate needed infrastructure development.

• Afghanistan and Pakistan plan to pursue, with US support, a Joint Action Plan outlining areas of common concern on issues of law enforcement, border security and management, and rule of law.


www.dawn.comhttp://www.dawn.com/wps/wcm/connect/dawn-content-library/dawn/news/world/12-us-administration-makes-urgent-aid-plea-for-idps--bi-07

 

[muse]

Look at what happens in which "Kachi Abadi" aroun dwhich major cities -- if you see these, then you can be rest assured that the politicians and bureaucrats are going to build by federally owned land, which they will then remove from federal control and ownership of these lands will find it's way to the friends of politicians and bureaucrats -- how you ask?

Think about the numbers we are talking about, once the afghan refugee cash cow evaporated for the politicians and bureaucrats, providence and some small measure of human intervention has enableda new source of income (Intl $$)

The army says it has killed 700 and change Talib in just Swat, one must ask, is this not 1/4 of the talib strength in Swat? And if it is not, why don't army come out and say so?

Now many nests of the talib have been allowed to exist and all these will need clearing - read IDPistan, read intl$$, read federal lands becoming the private property of politicians, bureaucrats and their cronies - land mafia, you say? The hell you say..