Pakistani state is not going to collapse: Zardari
A convoy carrying Pakistani troops head towards Swat valley from Buner yesterday. More than 100,000 panicked people fled Pakistan's northwest as the government briefly relaxed a curfew to allow civilians to escape a fierce onslaught against Taliban insurgents.Photo: AFP
Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari, in an interview aired yesterday, strongly rejected the notion that his country might collapse and called for international efforts to fight Islamic extremism.
"Is the state of Pakistan going to collapse?," Zardari asked himself rhetorically on NBC's "Meet the Press" program. "No. We are 180 million people. There the population is much, much more than the insurgents are."
The president was responding to assessments by some US military analysts, who had raised the possibility of a collapse of the Pakistani state because the Taliban insurgency has so destabilized it.
But Zardari admitted that Pakistan had "a problem" with Taliban activities inside its borders and suggested an international approach to address it.
"I think we need to find a strategy where the world gets together against this threat, because it's not Pakistan-specific," he said. "It's not Afghanistan-specific. Like I said, it's all the way from the Horn of Africa.
"You've had attacks in Spain. You've had attacks in Britain. You've had attacks in America. You've had attacks in Africa, Saudi Arabia," he said.
"So I think the world needs to understand that this is the new challenge of the 21st century, and this is the new war."
Over the past several days, Paksitani warplanes pounded rebel hideouts in the Swat valley, an ex-ski resort where up to 15,000 security forces have been deployed under orders to crush Taliban extremists in an escalating conflict that has displaced hundreds of thousands.
Together, helicopter gunships and ground forces killed at least 55 militants in various locations in the valley, including 15 in the town of Mingora, the Pakistani military said.
Zardari acknowledged his country will need US help to succeed in this fight.
"It's an accepted position that you -- we cannot work this problem out unless Pakistan, Afghanistan and America are on the same page," he said.
Meanwhile, US regional commander General David Petraeus expressed confidence Sunday that Pakistan's nuclear sites are secure from any attempted seizure by the Taliban.
"We have confidence in their security procedures," the chief of US Central Command said on the "Fox News Sunday" program when asked about Pakistan's nuclear safeguards as the Taliban make deep inroads.
Petraeus welcomed what he described as a new mood of determination by Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari's government to take on the Taliban, following White House talks between Zardari and President Barack Obama.
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