Pakistan a safe ally from the US one billion dollars

NEW YORK – Joint press conference at the Waldorf Astoria Hotel for George Bush and Pervez Musharraf. American support for Pakistan is strong: the US president announces aid to Islamabad for as much as $ 1 billion, also securing the lifting of sanctions. This is one of the most important moments of yesterday in New York, following the inauguration of the UN General Assembly, with the warnings of Secretary Kofi Annan. Attention, said Annan worried, “if we dedicate all our forces to the fight against terrorism, we risk making the terrorists win”. In inaugurating the debate at the Assembly, the general secretary warned the heads of state present about the risks of a strategy that only focuses on the Bin Laden war. “The problems we had before us on September 10 before the attack on the two towers in New York and the Pentagon are no less urgent. The number of people living on less than a dollar a day has not decreased; nor has Annan added that of people who die of AIDS, malaria, tuberculosis and other diseases that we can cure has decreased. Poverty, disease, environmental degradation and war are the real enemies of the world in the 21st century ». And then, turning to Bush, Annan wanted to warn the antitaliban alliance: “It would be tempting to say that we must now turn all our energies to the fight against terrorism, but in doing so I am convinced that we would give terrorism a kind of victory, because we would forget everything else “. Annan wanted, in front of the leaders of 158 countries summoned for the 56th General Assembly of the United Nations, to challenge, without naming it, Bin Laden who had accused him of being “in the service of the US”. So, he pointed the index at the goals that the UN has made its own in the “declaration for the millennium”, adopted a year ago: peace, development, human rights. Emergencies that in many countries are no less urgent today than they were before September 11th. After Annan, George Bush, Pakistani President Musharraf and the Iranian president, Khatami, took the floor. Musharraf reassured the Assembly that Pakistan’s nuclear weapons are safe and in “safe hands”. Then Musharraf met Bush at dinner. The topics of the meeting had already announced them to the New York Times. The Pakistani president had asked America for strong signs of confidence: the first is the release of the supply of 28 F16 fighter planes, already purchased by Pakistan but blocked by the Congress more than ten years ago along with all the other military supplies to the regime of Islamabad. From the podium of the UN, the Pakistani president, was more critical. He asked for a “short and targeted war and, after condemning the massacres of 9/11, he took up the themes set out by Annan to say that” it is the unresolved political disputes that provoke these extreme acts “. For example, “disputes in Bosnia, Kosovo, Palestine and Kashmir”. For Musharraf, who has not avoided harsh words against India, a historical rival for the Kashmir area, terrorism must be fought at the roots: “Poverty and deprivation lead to frustration and vulnerability, and are the terrain in which extremism and terrorism are nourished”.

November 11 2001