Japan Pledges up to $1 bln to Pak

TOKYO: Japan’s Prime Minister Taro Aso on Thursday promised up to one billion dollars in aid to help stabilise Pakistan, after meeting President Asif Ali Zardari on the eve of a donors meeting. Aso said at a media briefing after their talks that “I told him that Japan would make a pledge of up to one billion dollars” at the Tokyo aid conference on Friday that is jointly hosted by Japan and the World Bank.
The Japanese premier said Pakistan’s stability is important for the region and for “the peace and stability of the international community”.
President Zardari called Japan, already Pakistan’s biggest aid donor, “an important partner in the world. Japan is showing its responsibility by being always there to support Pakistan and its fight against terrorism.”
Almost 30 donor countries are to meet on Friday to raise what the World Bank hopes will be four to six billion dollars in loans and grant aid pledges for the poor, nuclear-armed country.
Washington has put Pakistan at the heart of the fight against Al-Qaeda and US President Barack Obama has unveiled a sweeping new strategy to turn around the Afghan war and defeat Islamist militants on both sides of the border.
Zardari stressed in a newspaper article in Japan that his government is determined to fight Islamic militants, but said it needed an aid drive which he likened to the US Marshall Plan for post-World War II Europe.