US to help Pak democratic institutions

WASHINGTON—Defending the United States policy toward Pakistan in recent years, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice has reaffirmed Washington’s support for democracy in the country and vowed to help sustain its democratic institutions.
“With the Pakistanis having made the transition, we can do more to help sustain democratic institutions in Pakistan and to work toward that. And we’re, in fact, looking at what kind of assistance that might require,” she said.
The top US diplomat told the advisory committee on democracy promotion at the State Department that Washington consistently encouraged free and fair elections in Pakistan.
She appreciated the outcome of February 18 polls in which the moderate forces gained victory over extremism. She particularly noted defeat of extremists in the frontier areas bordering Afghanistan.
Dr Rice said in response to a question that the US has a perception problem in Pakistan that it did not care about democracy and citing US support for democracy and fair and free elections argued that is not true.
“I do think we have a problem in Pakistan and that people think that we’ve been supportive of “the military government” without caring about Pakistani democracy, and it simply isn’t true.” “While we felt that we had to work with the Pervez Musharraf government for counterterrorism, but also in helping President Musharraf to bring Pakistan back from the edge of going over to extremism with his policies of enlightened moderation, I think we struck the balance properly in Pakistan.” Rice said the US had significant funding for education programs in Pakistan to modernize it and to try to bring the madrassas under government control.

—APP