With Pakistan becoming a hub for terrorist activities, it is no surprise that Pakistan is a very important country if the world needs to defeat terrorism.
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No country more important to US than Pakistan: Burns
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WASHINGTON: A senior US administration official has strongly defended the American security assistance for Pakistan and vowed to seek the congressional support on realising economic assistance programmes for the development of the country.
US Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs Nicholas Burns observed at a Washington think tank discussion that no country is more important to the US than Pakistan in the campaign against terrorism.
“Obviously, a central American interest would be the effectiveness of the Pakistani state and military in limiting the operations of the terrorist organisations, particularly those that are aligned against us – the Taliban and al-Qaeda,” he said.
“So, we would defend military assistance to Pakistan,” he added. “I would say that on a global basis, there’s probably no more important country to the United States than Pakistan in the global struggle to contain and defeat the major terrorist groups,” he further said. The Bush administration, he said, is conscious of the importance of socio-economic development in Pakistan and cited its plans to devote $750 million for tribal areas.