By IRNA,
Islamabad : President Asif Ali Zardari told US Secretary of Defence Robert Gates that the economic cost of the war against terror, amounting to US $ 35 billion for the last eight years, had impacted Pakistan’s economy adversely, Presidential spokesman said.
“Pakistan has been facing delays in payments of Coalition Support Fund claims”, the President informed the Defence Secretary and urged timely reimbursement of arrears, Farhatullah Babar said.
Reviewing the overall security situation, the President welcomed the US affirmation of commitment to Pakistan’s stability and security, adding also, “It must be based on mutual respect and trust.”
Briefing the media about the meeting, Spokesperson to the President former Senator Farhatullah Babar said that the President emphasized that the issue of arrears in Coalition Support Fund amounting to over 1.3 billion dollars be resolved at the earliest.
Security situation in the region, drone attacks, reimbursements of Coalition Support Fund arrears, fight against militancy, drug trafficking, the new US screening regime and strengthening of Pakistan’s law enforcing agencies were discussed in the meeting, he said.
The President expressed reservations over the new screening regime for Pakistani nationals, saying that it had generated resentment in the country and called for its review.
About the drone attacks on Pakistani territory, the President said that it undermined the national consensus against the war on militancy and called for creating a mechanism whereby the drones were used by Pakistan’s security forces rather than by foreign troops which raised questions of sovereignty.
It was critical that national consensus on war against militancy was not allowed to erode and anything that tended to weaken it was avoided, the President said.
President Zardari said that for the past over three decades the region had been turned into a theatre of war against the rival ideology by the international community which had turned Pakistan into a security driven state.
This, the President said, had gravely impacted on its social, human and economic development on the one hand and sustained and nurtured militancy on the other.
“If Pakistan’s progress had not been thus hampered the country today would not have been faced with economic woes it was faced with. The international community that together had created these conditions now owed it to Pakistan and to itself to help rebuild the country,” the President remarked.