Aid consortium

THE Friends of Pakistan, the consortium that has been set up to help the country meet "many challenges in the security and economic fields", held its inaugural session at New York on Friday. Although the participants did not consider the quantum of aid that should be set apart to bail it out of the current economic mess, the figure of money being quoted by some sections of the media to ensure proper economic recovery is between $10 and $15 billion. The Pakistan Foreign Secretary, who was present at the meeting, maintained that that much amount was, indeed, needed in view of the grave challenges the country was facing. Howsoever sweet words of "strong support of the international community for Pakistan's democratically elected government" one might hear at such get-togethers, experience proves that they are of little significance unless sufficient assistance does actually start coming in. Unfortunately, it had hardly been the fate of commitments made at these conferences. One hopes that in this particular case since the stakes for the world community are quite high it would turn out to be an exception. President Asif Zardari received assurances of help from US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, UK Foreign Minister David Miliband, UAE Foreign Minister Shaikh Abdullah bin Zayed and some other countries. The question is whether these commitments would start taking concrete shape as soon as the first regular session of the Friends takes place in Dubai next month.