Pakistan aid beats hopes but more needed

A day after international donors pledged more than $5 billion to Pakistan, US envoy Richard Holbrooke said yesterday that the aid exceeded expectations but far more is needed to strengthen the country's economy and fight terrorism.
Holbrooke, President Barack Obama's special representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan, said $5 billion is "not enough" for a big country that faces an unstable economy, complex politics, an ongoing battle against groups like the Taliban and al-Qaeda, and has an expanding nuclear arsenal.
"That's a very full agenda for any one country, and yet that's the situation Pakistan faces today," Holbrooke told reporters in Tokyo before heading back to Washington.
On Friday, representatives from 31 countries and 18 international organisations met in Tokyo for a World Bank-supported donors' conference for Pakistan.
The US and Japan pledged $1 billion each, while Saudi Arabia added $700 million and the EU $640 million. The total amount pledged was $5.28 billion, according to Pakistan's foreign minister.
The donors said their contributions would focus on improving the economic climate in Pakistan through infrastructure and other projects, and stressed that stability in Pakistan was key to averting the growth of terrorism throughout the region.
"It's a sign of the fact that there's a growing awareness in the world that Pakistan is at the very heart of the threat to stability in the world," Holbrooke said, adding that the country is critical to achieving success in neighbouring Afghanistan.
The total fell short of Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari's hope of as much as $6 billion, though the conference's Japanese hosts had said they expected a figure closer to $4 billion.