Poor economic condition and the increasing extremism poses a threat to Pakistan, a top Obama administration official has said.
“In helping Pakistan develop and prosper in the future, helping the government grow the economy of Pakistan will be vitally important,” State Department spokesman P J Crowley told foreign journalists in Washington.
“There is a security dimension to the challenge represented by the extremism that is a threat to Pakistan and a threat to others. But a great deal of the challenge is in expanding economic opportunity throughout Pakistan, including the tribal areas between Pakistan and Afghanistan,” he said.
Crowley underscored the importance of having balanced assistance to Pakistan. “We have a longstanding military relationship with Pakistan, and we continue to work on how we can best support Pakistan so that it, in turn, can defeat the extremism, which is a threat fundamentally to Pakistan itself as well to other countries in the region and around the world,” he said.
“But we have shifted to improve and expand the civilian assistance to Pakistan, and economic support is a critical aspect of that,” Crowley said.
