[Reader-list] Taliban 'could spread to India and the Gulf'

[Kshmendra Kaul]

It is the blackmailer's classic routine. Give me money or I will not provide the antidote for the lethal disease I have nurtured and help spread.
 
The full transcript of the interview with the blackmailing Foreign Minister of Pakistan, Mahmood Qureshi can be read at http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/e58cabc6-58bf-11de-80b3-00144feabdc0.html
 
Reproduced below is one of the news items on it.
 
Kshmendra
 
"Taliban 'could spread to India and the Gulf'" 




http://archive.gulfnews.com/articles/09/06/16/10323189.html
 
06/15/2009 11:51 PM | Financial Times


Islamabad: Pakistan has warned that the Taliban could spread beyond its borders to neighbouring India and as far as the Arabian Gulf, unless it receives international aid to help battle militancy on its soil.
 
Shah Mahmoud Quraishi, the foreign minister, said Pakistan would need up to $2.5 billion (Dh9.18 billion) in emergency relief and for long-term reconstruction of the Swat Valley and the surrounding region, once the fighting between government troops and militants had ended. 
 
In an interview with the Financial Times, Quraishi said that figure compared to the $1 billion in aid initially estimated by government officials. 
 
The warning comes as Pakistan widens its military offensive to other areas suspected of providing a safe haven to the Taliban. These include the Waziristan tribal region along the border with Afghanistan.
 
Pakistan's annual budget at the weekend earmarked Rs50 billion (Dh3.8 billion) over the next financial year to help people displaced by the Swat conflict. 
Western diplomats have warned that a failure to quickly help Swat victims could provoke unrest in parts of the country, central to the US-led war on terror in Afghanistan. 
 
"They [militants] have a global agenda. They have a regional agenda, they are not confined to Pakistan. They could go in to the [Arabian] Gulf, they could go in to India, they can go anywhere," Quraishi 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 United States has begun lobbying the oil-rich Arab countries of the Gulf Co-operation Council [GCC] to be more generous in helping Pakistan deal with the fallout of the offensive in the Swat Valley.
 
The GCC is a region which traditionally has had close business and military ties with Pakistan and is home to a large expatriate Pakistani community. 
 
Quraishi said US efforts to encourage GCC aid were only meant to "complement" Pakistan's own recent contacts with GCC countries seeking help. 
 
"They [the United States] are trying to help in whatever way they can, but Pakistan has independent relations [with the GCC]," he said.
 
A GCC diplomat in Islamabad told the Financial Times that Pakistan needed to "revive closer relations" with the region "which have been neglected in the war on terror".
 
"Pakistan has an important role in our region but that role has to be built up very slowly through further effort," the diplomat said.
 
Pakistan has announced a budget for the next year aimed at reviving a moribund economy buffeted by the global economic crisis.