Cameron gives £650 million to Pakistan.

David Cameron to step up co-operation with Pakistan in fight against terror Prime minister says it is in British national interest to help Pakistan, adding that problems of extremism and migration would be created if state failed

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/apr/05/david-cameron-enhanced-security-dialogue-pakistan

Patrick Wintour in Islamabad guardian.co.uk, Tuesday 5 April 2011 13.14 BST Article history
On an official visit to Islamabad, the prime minister has hailed cooperation between Pakistan and the UK on tackling terrorism Link to this video David Cameron and the Pakistani prime minister, Yusuf Rasa Gilani, have agreed to deepen co-operation on fighting terrorism by widening intelligence sharing, increasing UK aid to put 4 million children into school and setting up a joint centre of excellence to fight roadside bombs.

At a joint press conference, Cameron said it was in the British national interest to pour £650m of aid into Pakistan, saying that, if the state failed, it would create problems of extremism and migration.

Faced by allegations that its intelligence services are ambivalent in the fight against terrorism, Gilani said: "We want to assure you that Pakistan has the resources and a commitment to fight extremism and terrorism.

"We have the resolve, and we are fighting. We have paid a very high price. Thirty thousand people have been martyred and equal number disabled. The political leadership has been targeted.

"The bombs have gone off in girls' schools, hospitals, the malls, the police stations and even in the intelligence service has been targeted."

Cameron praised Pakistan, saying a "huge fight by the government" against terrorism was taking place.

He also defended the size of the aid programme, saying: "I would struggle to find an example of a country that is more in our national interest to progress and succeed than Pakistan.

"If Pakistan succeeds, we will make a step forward – if it fails, we will have all the problems of migration and extremism."

Cameron has taken a diplomatic gamble by pressing the "reset button" on his fraught relations with the Pakistan government.

Earlier, he told the country's president, Asif Ali Zardari, at a series of meetings in Islamabad that he wanted to work with Pakistan's security forces to fight the threat of terrorism.

A year ago, Cameron put British relations with Pakistan in the deep freeze by claiming the country's leadership was facing both ways on terrorism – remarks that caused huge anger across the Pakistan government, military and intelligence services.

During his one-day make-up visit, accompanied by his most senior defence and security officials, Cameron offered Zardari £650m in aid to spread education, extended intelligence co-operation and set up a joint "centre of excellence" in Pakistan to exchange knowledge on how to counter improvised explosive devices.

He also sought to reassure his hosts that he did not see India as Britain's preferred partner in the region, saying instead that he wanted to see trade between Pakistan and the UK rise from £1.9bn to £2.5bn by 2015.

The aid for education, worth £650m over four years, will go to train 9,000 teachers, purchase 6m new text books and build 8,000 schools. The scheme has been organised by Michael Barber, the former head of Tony Blair's public services delivery unit.

There are 17 million children in Pakistan who are not in school, including seven million primary school age children. The money will make Pakistan the biggest single recipient of UK aid.

In what represents a remarkable turnaround, British officials say they are convinced that the growing internal Muslim terrorist threat inside the country has led the leadership of the Pakistani intelligence services, the ISI, to take a tougher role in combating both the Pakistan Taliban and al-Qaida.

Sir Peter Ricketts, the national security adviser, Sir David Richards, the chief of the defence staff, and Sir John Sawers, the head of overseas intelligence, are accompanying Cameron, and were in Islamabad only a month ago to prepare the ground for what is being billed as an enhanced security dialogue.

At the lunchtime talks, Zardari brought his intelligence and defence chiefs.

Around half all terrorist cells operating in Britain originate from Pakistan, the British intelligence services believe.

For years, Britain and the US have been frustrated at the way in which the ISI has maintained such close relations with the Taliban in Afghanistan.

British officials indicated that they would be asking the Pakistan military, as diplomatically as possibly, when they plan to enter North Waziristan, the tribal heartland and sanctuary from which many terrorist groups operate.

Both British intelligence and the CIA believe North Waziristan to be the region in which most of the suicide bombings inside Pakistan, and cross-border attacks on US-led foreign and Afghan forces, are organised.

The Pakistan army has suffered big losses as a result of cleaning out other federally administered tribal areas, and seems to be holding back from tackling North Waziristan, partly due to striking a peace deal with extremists.

Pakistani troops moved into South Waziristan in 2009.

Pakistan says that, with 120,000 troops in the field, it currently lacks the military capacity to lead an assault on a mountainous area that might lead to a mass of refugees.

In the absence of troops on the ground, Britain supports the deadly use of unmanned US drones to bomb terrorist targets in the area, a practice that is regularly denounced by Pakistan politicians as counterproductive, in breach of their sovereignty and leading to the death of innocent people.

Between 2007 and 2011, about 164 drone strikes had been carried out, killing more than 964 militants. In Pakistan overall, 3,000 civilians are thought to have lost their lives in terrorist attacks, such as suicide bombings, in the past year.

Cameron's officials say they are nevertheless working to build a different, broader long-term partnership with the Pakistan government in what is described as a "less transactional relationship" between the two countries.

"We are not just coming with a set of immediate demands, but also listening about the risks they face and their own security problems. It is about building trust," one said.

Britain also thinks it is crucial to foster a better internal relationship between the military and politicians in a country that only returned to a shaky form of democracy three years ago.

The danger for the British is if its new-found faith in the ISI proves to be unfounded, or that Pakistan is playing a waiting game until 2015, the deadline by which UK troops will leave Afghanistan.

Cameron's aides are buoyed by signs that Pakistan wants to do more to foster a political settlement in Afghanistan and build better relations with India.

Cameron opened his visit by seeing Pakistan's national mosque, the Faisal masjid, the largest mosque in South Asia, constructed with the help of Saudi money. He was accompanied by Lady Warsi, the Muslim cabinet member.

What about students here in the UK then Cameron??? Let's look after our own children first!! Or is that too difficult for you to grasp?? You're just as bad as Brown and Blair!!!!

I can't believe he is doing this when soldiers are fighting for this country and then coming back to get made redundant.



Same with India....britain sends out over 6m and it goes on their space programme and not on the starving....doesn't make sense.