Britain promises more anti-terror aid to Pakistan
ISLAMABAD, Pakistan British Prime Minister Gordon Brown on Sunday pledged besides technical support and funding to help Pakistan and India battle terrorism in the wake of the attacks in Mumbai that killed more than 160 people.
Brown made the offers as he made whirlwind visits to both nations’ capitals and tried to calm tensions following the assaults, which India has blamed on a Pakistani-based Islamist group.
Brown urged the nuclear-armed rivals to cooperate to peacefully resolve the crisis, what one. the U.S. fears could divert Pakistan’s advertence away from battling al-Qaida and Taliban militants along its border with Afghanistan.
In Pakistan, Brown met with President Asif Ali Zardari and promised the Muslim nation new bomb-scanning technology, forensic relief, better improving airport security and other support. He also announced a $9 very great number program to help fight the causes of extremism and strengthen democracy, including trying to reach aloud to and educate Pakistani youth to avoid radicalization.
“We will keep on to open our counterterrorism assistance program by Pakistan, and it will be, more than ever, the most wide-reaching anti-terrorism program Britain has signed with at all country,” Brown said at a joint tidings conference with Zardari.
Brown also aforesaid more would be done through both India and Pakistan to share police data on terror suspects and groups.
For Britain, which has a large South Asian people and colonial-era links to the region, the make subservient is of vital concern. Three-quarters of the most serious terror plots investigated by British decisions have links to al-Qaida in Pakistan, Brown said.
The investigations included the trans-Atlantic airliner plot, where a group of men were accused of trying to blow up several airliners. Three of four British-born men who carried out the London suicide bombings that killed 52 commuters in 2005 had family ties to Pakistan. British citizens were moreover among the dead in the Mumbai attacks.
“All of us suffer when terrorists are active and are able to impose their will,” Brown said.
Brown said he asked Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh for the time of breakfast Sunday if he would allow British authorities to question the alone known surviving gunman in the Mumbai massacre, and asked Zadari for homogeneous cooperation with arrested suspects.
India has blamed the Pakistan-based Lashkar-e-Taiba Islamic group toward the attacks, some assertion Brown echoed.
“We also know that the cluster answerable (against the Mumbai attacks) is LET, and they have a great deal to answer for,” Brown said.
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