Tuesday, August 11, 2009

Zardari reviews ‘Malakand Pilot Project’

ISLAMABAD : President Asif ali Zardari Tuesday said that the Malakand Plan should result in increased security with improved system of governance in which the potential of the region is fully exploited for economic growth and the region is made a secure, prosperous and tolerant place free from the dangers of militancy.

He said this while presiding over a meeting to review the Malakand Pilot Project, aimed at rebuilding the region after the return of the Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs) to their homes.

The plan will be presented to Friends of Democratic Pakistan (FoDP) partners for their consideration at the Ministerial meeting in Istanbul on August 25.

Briefing the journalists about the meeting, spokesperson to the President, former Senator Farhatullah Babar said that President Zardari has expressed the hope that the Malakand Pilot Project will ensure that militancy and extremism did not relapse in the area. It should serve as a model for replication in other areas too, he said.

The President said that narcotics and drug peddling was also an area of serious concern as it fed the war machine of the militants adding, "The Malakand project should ensure rooting out drug trafficking".

The President asked the meeting to convert the recent social and political disaster in Swat and Malakand into a great and new opportunity for creating viable models for containing extremism and violence anywhere in the world.

Farhatullah Babar said that there are six working groups of FoDP that were established after the April 17 meeting. The working groups deal exclusively with Security, Development, Energy, Institution capacity building, Trade, Terrorism and a working group on Swat and Malakand.

The Swat and Malakand Working Group was tasked to prepare a "Pilot Project" for rehabilitation of IDPs, rebuilding the infrastructure and fighting militancy on a long term basis.

The President said that the success of the plan depended upon a security environment that permitted to implement it and said that the government will ensure that the process of improvement in security environment now under way moved forward and not reversed in any way.

The President said that the objective of the plan was to provide adequate security to ensure speedy justice to proactively counter the threat of militancy.

The meeting was attended by Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani, Foreign Minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi, Interior Minister Rehman Malik, Finance Minister Shaukat Tarin, Minister for SAFRON Najmuddin Khan, Information Minister Qamar Zaman Kaira, Minister of State for Finance and Economic Affairs Hina Rabbani Khar, Secretary General Salman Faruqi and senior officials of different ministries besides Ambassadors and senior diplomatic staff of Turkey, USA and UK in Islamabad.

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