By NNN-PTI,
Washington : The Pakistani government should focus on fighting militants in tribal areas while the US will be backing Islamabad economically, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice has said.
In an interview with the BBC in Brussels on Wednesday, Rice said that the US supports the democratic government of Pakistan, adding Washington stressed on free and fair elections.
“… Let me say first that we support this democratically elected government. The United States was a strong advocate for a set of free and fair elections…We didn’t agree with the state of emergency several months ago. But President Pervez Musharraf served well as an ally in the war on terror. We now have a democratically elected government” she said.
The US government has conveyed to Pakistan that it wants to help them economically.
“We have said to the Pakistani government that we want to help them economically. We are supporting a package within the G-7 finance ministers to help the Pakistani economy.
“We want to help them in terms of social development, educational reform. But we all have an interest in fighting terrorism and the militants, because the militants are not just after the United States or Afghanistan. These are the people who, after all, assassinated Benazir Bhutto. These are the people who have launched attacks throughout Pakistan,” she added according to a transcript released here.
“And so the government does need to focus on what it is going to do to stop these militants..We’ve had that conversation very recently when the Pakistani Prime Minister was in Washington to meet with President Bush,” Rice said.