‘Militants will exploit sentiments of flood-hit Pakistanis’

ISLAMABAD - Two senior leaders in Pakistan’s Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa province Friday warned that militant outfits would try to exploit the sentiments of the flood-hit people and that help from all quarters was needed urgently to check them.

Chief Minister Ameer Haider Hoti said extremists would try to take advantage if there was any unwarranted delay in supplying aid for the flood victims.

The province was already in a state of war against terrorists and has managed to push them to the brink, he said.

“We are not forgetting the war on terror in the wake of this disaster,” Hoti told representatives of 26 countries at a donor conference here Friday.

Later, Mian Iftikhar Hussain, provincial minister for information, said the threat from extremists was very much present and steps needed to be taken urgently so that they would not be able to exploit the sentiments of the displaced people.

The situation in the province has literally gone back more than 50 years and over two trillion rupees would be needed to restore the destroyed infrastructure, he said.

The donor conference was attended by envoys from the US, Britain, Japan and Italy among others and representatives of the World Bank, USAID and other international organisations.