NEW YORK, Sept 7: In the wake of Asif Ali Zardari’s election as the president of Pakistan and increase in militant attacks, an American scholar who recently visited Peshawar has asked the Bush administration to expedite economic aid to the country.

In an article in the International Herald Tribune, Anatol Lieven, a professor at King’s College London and a senior fellow of the New America Foundation in Washington, applauded Senator Joseph Biden’s “long-term plan for the United States to help Pakistan economically, thereby strengthening the state against extremism”, but stressed that “Pakistan may not be able to wait that long.”

He said the United States should make these funds available to Pakistan immediately for this specific purpose.

“Secondly, America should give emergency aid to the hundreds of thousands of people displaced by the Pakistani military offensives in Bajaur in the

Federally Administered Tribal Areas and Swat in the North-West Frontier Province. This should be treated with the same urgency that the United States approaches natural disasters like the Pakistani earthquake four years ago,” Professor Lieven said.

“America should also use its influence with the IMF to procure its assistance to Pakistan. It is essential, however, that this should not be made conditional on cuts in subsidies and social programmes that will further hurt Pakistan’s poor; such cuts would undermine the Pakistani government still further.”

“Limited American financial help can tide Pakistan over its immediate crisis. At the same time, the United States should urgently craft longer-term aid programmes intended to strengthen resistance to the spread of insurgency.”