WASHINGTON, Sept 4: The United States said on Tuesday that there’s a broad consensus in Pakistan for a moderate vision for the country’s future and the extremists who carry out violent attacks on innocent civilians cannot affect this vision.

At a briefing in Washington, State Department’s deputy spokesman Tom Casey also emphasised that such attacks should not affect Pakistan’s progress towards democracy and the country should be able to hold fair and free elections as scheduled.

“There is a broad political consensus in Pakistan to support a moderate vision of Pakistan’s future,” he said, “one that allows for economic development; and one that allows for education for all its children, one that allows for the people to express themselves through democratic elections.”The United States, he said, fully backs the move towards democracy and is working with the government in Islamabad to defeat terrorists.

“And so I don’t think, regardless of what the intentions are from the extremists in Pakistan, that it’s going to have an impact on the broader goals of that country in terms of its own development, and that applies to President Musharraf as well as other political leaders in the country,” Mr Casey said.

The United States, he said, strongly condemns the terrorist attacks in Rawalpindi that killed 25 people as there’s no justification, political or otherwise, for attacking civilians, for endangering human life.