LONDON, March 6: Alluding to the ongoing tussle between President Asif Ali Zardari and PML-N chief Nawaz Sharif, Foreign Secretary David Miliband said on Friday that politicians must unite to face a “very grave situation” that was worsening.

He told BBC Radio’s Today Programme that Pakistan was facing a “mortal threat” from internal militancy.

According to Mr Miliband, Pakistan’s internal instability was “a grave situation and... it has got worse”. He urged politicians to unite and said: “I think that the degree of political disunity that exists at the moment is only contributing to the problem.”

He added that the country’s economic decline in the global credit crunch was also a major factor.

“You’ve got the combination of a political crisis precipitated by the recent Supreme Court judgment, so democratic politicians are not coming together to fight terrorism. Secondly, you’ve got massive economic uncertainty; this is a country now with a massive IMF loan. And thirdly, you’ve got a security challenge on a number of fronts. The western frontier that you referred to, the 2,400-kilometre border with Afghanistan; but also the attacks in the centre of Pakistan, those that claimed the life of Benazir Bhutto…, and obviously the most recent attack. So this is a very grave situation, and it’s intimately linked to the situation in Afghanistan.”

He pointed towards Lashkar-e-Taiba for the Lahore attack without directly accusing it of carrying out the bloody attack.

“I think one of the issues that I’ve been raising in my four visits to Pakistan is the need for central and local government in Pakistan to work to replace those Lashkar-e-Taiba or at least their front organisations, welfare and educational organisations, with the arms of the Pakistani state. And this goes to, what I think is a core issue. Pakistan is a country that for 60 years, over the last 60 years, it’s had about 31 years of military rule. At the same time, it spends less than half the amount of money on education as it does on the military. And there you have a recipe for people seeking a better life for their kids turning to madressah and turning to extremism.”
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