WASHINGTON, Feb 13: US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, while presenting her last budget before Congress, said on Wednesday that the United States was concerned over the potential for violence during the Feb 18 elections in Pakistan.
Her budget request for 2009 includes $830 million for Pakistan, which includes $453.2 million of economic support fund and $300 million from the foreign military fund.
The debate on elections in Pakistan followed a question from former US presidential candidate, Senator John Kerry who wanted to know what standards the Bush administration had set to judge the fairness of these elections, particularly in the wake of a recent survey expressing concerns about the current political situation in the country.
While responding to the question, Ms Rice regretted that for variety of reasons the group that conducted the survey – Washingtons International Republican Institute – had to pull out of Pakistan.
“But large European Commission monitoring is still on and we will listen to them,” she said. “There are other NGOs involved as well. And we will listen to them.”
Ms Rice said the US administration also had helped train local officials in election monitoring and the US Embassy would have “our people out and about in the country.”
Senator Kerry then asked her how confident she was that these elections would be fair and free.
“I believe that Pakistan leadership understands that they have to have election that inspires confidence in the Pakistan people, that it’s a step forward towards democracy,” she said.
“It is not going to be easy. We all are concerned about the potential for violence. We are concerned about the potential that they are at least pockets where there may be problems with elections.”
The United States, however, believes that “we have to keep pressing and encouraging and insisting that this is an election on which a lot is holding,” she said.
Secretary Rice said the US administration had also been telling Pakistani authorities that the elections have to inspire confidence and encourage people get to vote freely.
“Once elections are over, the key is going to be to bring about a government that again can inspire that there are a wide range of moderate voices that have been integrated into it,” she said.
Secretary Rice told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee that from its experiences in Afghanistan and Iraq, the United States has learned that while “the military can buy time and space, it’s really civilians who have to build governance structures, nongovernmental institutions, rule of law, justice, and functioning economies.”
She said that in Afghanistan the United States tried to deal with counterinsurgency and reconstruction through a kind of international effort and while it helped, it also has led to some incoherence.She said that the militarily in Afghanistan has had battlefield successes against the Taliban but the insurgents have now gone to hit-and-run tactics and suicide bombings, in trying to terrorize the population.
Secretary Rice said that during her recent visit to Afghanistan, she had extensive discussions about the importance of refocusing on population security and the importance of building police forces and local citizens forces that can after an area has been cleared by coalition forces hold the territory.
She said that to deal with the incoherence created by the involvement of so many nations, the US is now searching for an envoy who can help bring coherence to the international effort.
