Pakistan floods have hit fight against terror: Holbrooke

[Lahore_Real_Estate]

NEW YORK: Pakistan’s fight against terrorism has been constrained by the need to deploy troops to help victims of the recent devastating floods, the senior US official for Afghanistan and Pakistan said on Tuesday.

Ambassador Richard Holbrooke said there was no evidence yet that Islamabad was acting on Washington’s demands that it moves against the Haqqani group, a Taliban ally which the US officials suspect, has ties to Pakistani intelligence, and suggested this was because of the country’s devastating floods.

“They have tens of thousands of troops on flood duty. The army has really been the major factor in the rescue effort, and you can’t do both things at once,” said Holbrooke, who spoke in New York as part of a Reuters summit. “The country is full of rumors. You’re all aware of them. But as far as we’re concerned, our focus is solely on how we can help the people,” he added.

Pakistan’s economy was already fragile and the cost of rehabilitation will likely push the 2010/11 fiscal deficit to between six and seven percent of gross domestic product against an original target of four percent.

Holbrooke conceded the floods meant more government troops were being diverted to relief work from battling the local Taliban and other militant groups such as the Haqqani network, which is believed to be closely linked to al Qaeda. Holbrooke said the US, which has staged repeated aerial drone strikes against suspected militant targets in the border region between Afghanistan and Pakistan, would “go after them with every means available”.

“This is a ferocious thing that is going on, and by ferocious I mean the military campaign,” Holbrooke said, referring to the US fight against militants in eastern Afghanistan near the border with Pakistan. “The Pakistani army has diverted a very large number of troops to the relief efforts.” reuters