Obama war-plan not enough: Pak-Afghan envoys

WASHINGTON: President Barack Obama's anti-terror escalation may not prove enough to break the back of Al-Qaeda and the Taliban, the Pakistani and Afghan envoys here warned Thursday. Both ambassadors called on the United States and its allies to provide more cash and military tools to defeat terrorism on the battlefield and alleviate the poverty and ignorance that sustains extremist ideology. Pakistan's Husain Haqqani welcomed the new Obama strategy, but contrasted the aid given to nations in the extremist epicenter with the multi-billion-dollar bailouts extended to US companies in distress. "The resources that are being committed may look big to some but very frankly, I think that a company on the verge of failure is quite clearly able to get a bigger bailout than a nation that is accused of failure," he said. "Why does Afghanistan or Pakistan get less resources allocated to solving a bigger problem (extremism) ... than say for example some failed insurance company or some car company whose real achievement is that they couldn't make cars that they could sell?" Obama plan includes a focus on Al-Qaeda sanctuaries in Pakistan and boosting civilian efforts to build up both Afghanistan and Pakistan, notably in agriculture and education. Afghan ambassador Said Jawad, speaking alongside Haqqani at a forum organized by Washington's Atlantic Council think-tank, also said Obama's new strategy marked a welcome reorganization of US goals. But he stressed that Afghanistan needed more help for a major expansion of its security forces, from the 134,000 army troops and 82,000 police personnel foreseen in the Obama plan. To counter the resurgent Taliban, he said, the Afghan army should number at least 250,000 and the police 150,000. Haqqani welcomed a bill introduced in the US House of Representatives that would triple economic assistance for Pakistan to 1.5 billion dollars a year and shore up democratic rule by attacking hotbeds of extremist schooling. The Pakistani ambassador said his government welcomed US demands for accountability for how aid money is spent, but rejected "intrusion" by Congress through onerous conditions.