Pittsburgh: There is a growing recognition among the people of Pakistan that the Taliban and other extremists in the country are alien to the spirit of the founder of the country Muhammad Ali Jinnah, special US envoy to Pakistan and Afghanistan, Richard Holbrooke, has said.
"There seems to be a growing recognition that the Taliban and other miscreants, to use the Pakistanis’ own word for this, are a threat to the entire country and are alien to
the spirit of Muhammad Ali Jinnah and the founders of Pakistan," Holbrooke said at a press conference after the meeting of Friends of Democratic Pakistan at the UN headquarters in New York yesterday.
"And so we feel – and as Secretary (of State Hillary) Clinton gets ready for her trip to Pakistan, we are shifting our focus towards helping Pakistan with the energy crisis,
which is, of course, at the top of the minds of most Pakistanis," he said.
"We think we’ve come quite a way, but we recognise that Pakistani public opinion on the United States is still surprisingly low given the tremendous effort the United States
is making to lead in the international coalition in support of Pakistan," he said.
Bureau Report
