Zardari threatens to shut down madrassas

ISLAMABAD - PPP Co-Chairman Asif Ali Zardari said that the West invested in Pakistan’s weapons and military but not in its people with the result that the international community had to pay a terrible price for using Pakistan for its short-term political objectives.
“We were exploited under colonialism, manipulated as a tool of cold war intrigue, made surrogates for a war against the Soviets in Afghanistan, and when that war was won, Pakistan and Afghanistan were abandoned to the forces of extremism and fanaticism”, he said in his key note address at the Socialist International Congress in Athens, Greece, on Tuesday.
He said that Pakistan was now the Petri dish of international terrorism and that was a product of failed international politics and not our creation.
The PPP leader said Pakistan could still be converted into a successful model of modernity for 1.3 billion Muslims on earth for which the help of the international community was needed.
“We can’t do it alone. We need the help of the world. If we succeed, we will contain extremism and terrorism. But if we fail, the world will fail with us”.
Asif Ali Zardari urged the world to convene a South and Central Asia Regional Conference to coordinate a multi-faceted international programme not only to contain terrorism militarily, but also to choke off the social and economic oxygen of the fire of terrorism by rebuilding the economies and infrastructure of our region.
A prosperous Pakistan will smash the remnants of terrorism from our frontiers better than the bullets, missiles and tanks of the superpowers, he said.
Pleading for the socio-economic development of Pakistan he said that it would ensure not only Pakistan’s but also the entire world’s stability.
He said that Pakistan stood against terrorism not as surrogates but as partners to the civilized world because we are fighting for the very soul of Pakistan adding that Pakistan had suffered more victims of terrorism than any nation on earth, including the United States on September 11th.
“Has the UN, or the United States, or the United Kingdom, contributed one cent to the victims of terrorism in our land?”