Published: March 28, 2009
ISLAMABAD, Pakistan — In an address to a joint session of Parliament, President Asif Ali Zardari promised Saturday to ease domestic political turmoil and praised the Obama administration’s new policy to Pakistan as “positive change.”
In a conciliatory gesture to the opposition party, Pakistan Muslim League-N, Mr. Zardari said that he would lift the executive rule he had imposed on Punjab Province, the most populous province in Pakistan and one where the opposition party holds the most seats in the legislature.
The announcement by Mr. Zardari was seen as another major concession after the opposition party led huge street demonstrations, forcing the president to agree to the restoration of the chief justice, Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry, who had been removed from the bench in 2007.
In phrases that were most likely intended to please Washington, Mr. Zardari said that Pakistan needed to “root out extremism and militancy.” He welcomed the new package of $7.5 billion for civilian assistance over five years formally announced by President Obama on Friday.
The increased American aid showed that Washington agreed with Pakistan that the best way to fight extremism was through alleviating poverty, Mr. Zardari said.
“It is an endorsement of our call for economic and social uplift as a means to fight extremism,” he said.
This was in implicit contrast to the eight years of rule by Pervez Musharraf, a former general, when almost all of the $10 billion in American assistance to Pakistan went to the army.
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