Islamabad, Jan 9 (Inditop.com) British Foreign Secretary David Miliband said Saturday he is visiting Pakistan to understand the challenges the country is facing on political, economic and security fronts and how it is meeting them.
“The reasons for my visit this weekend are, first of all, to hear from Pakistan’s leaders not just in Islamabad but elsewhere in the country about the political, economic and security challenges that Pakistan faces and how it’s going about meeting them,” a statement issued by the British High Commission quoted Miliband as saying.
He also noted that Pakistan’s armed forces as well as the country’s civilians “have suffered greatly not least over the last year from terrorist violence and they are showing great sacrifice in taking on the internal terrorist threat that I believe is the greatest threat to the future of Pakistan”.
“So I’ll be discussing how Pakistan is rising to the challenge with international support of addressing the dangers that it faces,” Miliband added.
Pakistan’s armed forces had launched a major operation last April against the Taliban in Swat and other areas of the country’s restive northwest. The focus of the operations shifted in October to the South Waziristan Agency along the border with Afghanistan. The military says some 2,500 militants have been killed in the two operations.
During his visit Miliband will meet with President Asif Ali Zardari, Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani and Foreign Minister Shah Mehmood Qureshi, among others.
In this context, he noted that Britain and Pakistan “are very close partners, linked not just by history but by families in Britain who’ve got family in Pakistan, and by cultural links, by business links and by shared political commitments not least to stability in South Asia, to democracy in Pakistan and to a shared drive for greater prosperity in Pakistan”.
“I’ll also be talking about the forthcoming London conference on Afghanistan which will take place on the 28th January. That conference will bring together over 60 countries to talk about how the international community can support the government of Afghanistan in putting into practice the promises that were made by President Karzai in his inaugural speech in November in Kabul,” Miliband added.
