By IANS,
New Delhi : Prime Minister Manmohan Singh Monday expressed unease about Pakistan’s deal with the Taliban and also said India was not opposed to economic aid for Islamabad but has reservations about military aid which had been used against New Delhi in the past.
“This is a cause of worry. This is a problem we can’t resolve on our own. We will have to work with the international community,” Manmohan Singh said when asked about his reaction to the deal with the Taliban in Swat Valley in Pakistan.
The prime minister was speaking to senior journalists at his residence on the sidelines of the launch of IT icon N.R. Narayana Murthy’s book “A Better India, A Better World.”
Asked whether he was satisfied with Pakistan’s response to the Mumbai attack, he said: “I am not satisfied. It’s not adequate. The international community is agreed on who these people (terrorists behind 26/11) were. But they (Pakistan authorities) haven’t done anything.”
In statements earlier, Manmohan Singh has made it clear that India will not resume talks with Pakistan unless it takes tangible action against the perpetrators of the Mumbai terror spree and dismantles the infrastructure of terrorism on its soil.
The prime minister also emphasised India’s anxieties about the massive aid given to Pakistan apparently to combat terrorism and extremism. “We have worries about it,” Manmohan Singh said in reply to a question about his response to the billions of dollars pledged by western countries to Pakistan.
“We do not have problems with economic aid for building schools, roads and hospitals in Pakistan. But our experience has shown that military aid has been used against us in the past,” he said.
In his new policy on Afghanistan and Pakistan (AfPak), US President Barack Obama has pledged $1.5 billion in non-military aid to Pakistan over the next five years. A conference of the Friends of Pakistan in Tokyo last week agreed to give Pakistan over $5 billion aid to prop up Pakistan’s tottering economy in return for assurances to fight terrorism.
India has anxieties about the end use of these funds as they have often been diverted for anti-India terror operations. Obama had said last year that aid given to Pakistan has been misused for anti-India activities.