Islamabad: Pakistani Foreign Minister Shah Mehmood Qureshi has called for more international aid to combat extremists, saying that the Taliban could otherwise spread their tentacles into India and the Gulf.
He said this in an interview, published on Monday in Financial Times, which came days ahead of the first summit of the European Union and Pakistan leaders in Brussels, at which aid for Islamabad will likely top the agenda.
The Pakistani Foreign Minister called for $2.5 billion alone in emergency relief and reconstruction aid for the NWFP.
"They (militants) have a global agenda, they have a regional agenda, they are not confined to Pakistan. They could go into the Gulf, they could go into India, they can go anywhere," Qureshi said.
"There is a collective interest and there has to be a collective realisation that this is not Pakistan's problem. It's a larger problem.''
The Foreign Minister added the international community needed to help Islamabad improve its counter-terrorism capacity and stabilise the flagging economy of the country.
"When we do it with our own resources, obviously other areas will suffer, because we'll have to divert resources. This cannot be ignored," Qureshi said.
He warned that if more money needed to be diverted from state coffers to help the two million people displaced by the fighting in the NWFP , the economy of the country and its efforts to fight the Taliban would suffer.
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