UN backs Pakistan's fight to wipe out extremism

UNITED NATIONS - Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said Tuesday he supports Pakistan's action to curb extremism as President Asif Ali Zardari appealed for global aid to care for over one million civilians displaced by the military operations to flush out Taliban militants from the Swat valley.
A UN statement issued after the meeting between the world body chief and the Pakistani leader also expressed "confidence and trust" in President Zardari's leadership.
Zardari told reporters that Ban are joining an appeal for assistance to help Pakistan deal with the "human catastrophe" resulting from the fighting in the country's north-west.
"We're appealing to the world, myself and the secretary general... to draw attention on the human catastrophe that is taking place," he said.
"They (civilians) are losing their crops, they're losing their earnings, their livelihood and their homes, so we want the world to help us," he added.
"The secretary general has been kind enough to accept our appeal to him and he is going to appeal to the world with us jointly to help Pakistan."
The president said the basic purpose of his meeting with the secretary-general was to draw the world attention to the crisis so that help could be mobilized as soon as possible.
Not only the civilians be looked after at this difficult time, the president said the U.N. must help in rehabilitating the uprooted people back to their abodes when the military operations were completed.
On his part, Ban told reporters that in his meeting with Zardari, he expressed his "deep concern" about the humanitarian situation in northwestern Pakistan.
"I expressed my deep concern and I expect President Zardari to take all necessary care to protect the civilian population," the UN chief said. "The UN is ready to stand by to provide the necessary humanitarian assistance."
Ban said he asked the Pakistani leader "to facilitate the smooth delivery of humanitarian assistance and the protection of humanitarian workers," adding "it is a very serious situation".
In Geneva, UN humanitarian chief John Holmes earlier on Tuesday said he would "substantially" increase an aid appeal for Pakistan after half a million people fled the conflict in the northwest over the past 10 days.
The United Nations had made an appeal for 165.9 million dollars for humanitarian aid in Pakistan for 2008-2009.
"Clearly that is not going to be enough," Holmes, who runs the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), told journalists.
He said that even before the latest fighting between the military and Taliban in northwest Pakistan, the United Nations was already dealing with about half a million displaced people in the country.
With half a million more people fleeing in the past 10 days, "it is a situation that we are struggling to keep up with", Holmes said.
Meanwhile UN statement said the two leaders discussed the growing humanitarian crisis in Pakistan's North West Frontier Province, where United Nations agencies are ramping up aid to hundreds of thousands of people fleeing a government offensive against militants.
"They covered a wide range of issues relevant to Pakistan including the regional situation, movement forward on the Commission of Inquiry into the assassination of Mohtarma Benazir Bhutto Shaheed, the positive progress in the functioning of the Friends of Democratic Pakistan Group, and current development in North Western Pakistan."
Referring to the fact-finding commission to look into the assassination of Mohtarma Benazir Bhutto, he thanked the Pakistan government for the seed money, which would enable the establishment of a secretariat and do the groundwork.
He said a third member commission of the commission has yet to be appointed.
The three-member commission, which will be headed by Chile's U.N. Ambassador Heraldo Munoz, includes Indonesia's former attorney general Marzuki Dar Usman. The third member will be either from Norway or Sweden.
A six-member U.N. technical team for the commission has already paid a week-long trip to Pakistan to prepare the ground for the U.N. probe.
The team was headed by Mark Quarterman, who had also worked on the commission that investigated the murder of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri.
Ms. Bhutto was assassinated in gunshot and suicide bombing attacks on Dec. 27, 2007 after addressing an election rally in a park in Rawalpindi.
The Pakistani government had requested the United Nations to establish a commission to identify the culprits and those behind the killing.
Asked whether he would visit the affected civilians soon after his return to Pakistan like PML-N chief Nawaz Sharif had already done, President Zardari said, "Let's not do politics at this forum."
Asked whether he felt the Obama administration was putting too much pressure on Pakistan, he said, "No, we're working togther."