ISLAMABAD, Jan 15: Former prime minister Benazir Bhutto said on Sunday “international support for the military dictatorship in Pakistan for short-term strategic reasons” was a mistake and could prove tragic in the end. “Afghanistan was a tragic case in point of how retreating from the principles of human rights and democracy can have the most tragic unanticipated consequences,” she said addressing a gathering of Pakistanis in New York.

“While elected prime ministers are forced into exile, we cannot say Pakistan has human rights. While NAB (the National Accountability Bureau) finds corruption only in the opposition and not in the ruling party, we cannot say Pakistan has justice.

“If democracy is good for Iraq, Afghanistan and Palestine, then democracy, and not dictatorship, should be supported in Pakistan,” the PPP leader asserted.

Ms Bhutto said the international community’s foreign policy agenda should promote stability and strengthen democratic values simultaneously, “not selectively but universally, not just because it is convenient but also because it is right”. Former US President Bill Clinton displayed “this mixture of realism and idealism” best when he militarily intervened to stop the genocide of Muslims in the former Yugoslavia, she said.

“In the rhetoric of the West, democracy, women’s rights, human rights, and press freedom are important, but apparently only sometimes,” she observed.

The twice dismissed prime minister said that “governing was essentially about making choices and about deciding what is most important and must be addressed immediately”.

“This is why it is so very important to have a government that is elected, representative, accountable and responsive to the needs of the people,” she said, asking the Pakistani community in New York “to make the choices that can help build a better, brighter Pakistan”.