US Special Representative for Pakistan and Afghanistan, Ambassador Holbrooke has said that reconstruction effort in Pakistan cannot be financed completely by the international community and Pakistan has to take lead in it.
He also said relief and rehabilitation operations to help flood victims in Pakistan was not just a military show, the civilian government was also out there too doing its job.
In a briefing at the state department, via teleconference, on Monday, Holbrooke said whatever Pakistan Army was doing including 25 percent cuts in ration to share with affectees were very well appreciated. Holbrooke said that the international community will be there to help Pakistan. Aid will be there, the EU and the Japanese will be there. “Chinese are now getting into it in a large way, particularly in north of Chitral, but Pakistanis know they have to do more, and how much they do remains to be seen,” he added.
He said it is true that the Pakistani army was in lead role in relief operations because of its ability to provide helicopters, to deploy large number of people and due to its tightest organic organization which was logical. “But everywhere we went the civilians were out there too, doing their jobs” he added.
At the same time, the World Bank and the United States urged Pakistan to take steps to reassure donor countries that it is capable of using their flood aid responsibly and transparently and that it can enact reforms.
World Bank President Robert Zoellick told the high-level UN meeting that Islamabad would have to prove its ability to manage foreign aid ahead of an October meeting in Brussels to review a flood damage assessment report the World Bank and Asian Development Bank are preparing.
“To make most effective use of help and even to secure full donor support, the government will need a reconstruction founded on transparency, accountability, flexibility, backed by law,” Zoellick said.
“Senior Pakistani officials have told us that this is what they wish to do,” he said. “Yet experience from many countries warns that the machinery tends to slide back to business as usual.” He added that the Pakistani government should ‘continue to take concrete steps by the October meeting, backed by law, so we have an opportunity to build Pakistani ownership, governance and capacity’.
US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton echoed Zoellick, saying Pakistan must ‘lead by instituting the reforms that will pave the way to self-sufficiency’. “The international community will support Pakistan’s efforts at reform and reconstruction,” she said.
Clinton said the United States would help its ally ‘bring transparency, oversight and accountability to the reconstruction’.
Foreign Minister Shah Mehmood Qureshi responded by saying that every dollar it received ‘will be utilized in the most efficient manner ... and in the most transparent manner’.
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