PAKISTAN: Pakistan will postpone the purchase of a fleet of F-16 aircraft to prioritise emergency aid for earthquake survivors the president Pervez Musharraf said yesterday.
The announcement came days after the military leader was criticised for refusing to cut Pakistan's massive defence budget in the wake of the disaster that has killed more than 73,000 people.
"We want to bring maximum relief and reconstruction efforts," Gen Musharraf said during a tour of the devastated city of Muzaffarabad at the start of the Islamic Eid al-Fitr holiday.
The US agreed to sell the F-16 fighters to Pakistan in March after intense lobbying from Gen Musharraf. Washington blocked an original deal in the 1990s in protest at the development of Pakistan's nuclear weapons programme.
Local media reports suggest Islamabad plans to buy 25 F-16 jets at an estimated cost of $25 million (€21 million) each.
Gen Musharraf also urged the international community to be more generous in providing relief for the earthquake survivors. International donors have pledged $2 billion, mainly for long-term reconstruction, but emergency relief efforts remain badly underfunded.
The World Food Programme said it may have to curtail helicopter flights within days without more money. In comparison, donors promised $13½ billion after the tsunami in southeast Asia last year.
The US military has played a key role in the disaster operation, a move analysts say is partly aimed at overcoming resentment to its war on Islamist militancy.
In Muzaffarabad, the capital of Pakistani-administered Kashmir, Gen Musharraf praised a mobile army surgical hospital (Mash) unit.
"Is there a better word than excellent?" he said after meeting American doctors and nurses. "This will go a long way to create the right kind of impression about American concerns for the people, for us." Across Pakistan usually joyous Eid al-Fitr celebrations, marking the end of the holy month of Ramadan, were muted in deference to quake survivors who offered prayers amid the debris and laid flowers on graves of relatives.
Some religious leaders have blamed the earthquake on the wrath of a God angry with his people. "God is testing us, testing our patience, testing our faith," Qazi Hussain Ahmed, the leader of the powerful Jamaat-e-Islami party told a crowd of over 1,000 men.