Pakistan is planning to extract maximum financial benefit from its decision to extend its full support to a US-led campaign against international terrorism.
Finance Minister Shaukat Aziz said he was confident that the Islamabad government's backing for a campaign which could involve military action against neighboring Afghanistan would have economic benefits.
The prospect of radically improved relations with the US in particular could pay dividends as the country seeks to claw its way out of its current economic quagmire, Aziz said.
"Clearly as the relationship [with the US] grows, I am sure the economic ties will grow which could mean better market access, better treatment on debt rescheduling and more money, both directly and through multilateral institutions," he added.
Aziz, who worked as a senior executive for Citibank in New York before being appointed to his current post after a military coup in 1999, said that Pakistan's relationship with the US, the IMF and the World Bank was improving even before the current crisis.
"On our own also we were moving in that direction but this will give it an extra boost, no question."
Mired in debt and with almost a third of its people unable to meet their daily nutritional requirements, Pakistan is in desperate need of any kind of economic support it can muster.
US Secretary of State Colin Powell on Saturday said Pakistan had been "very forthcoming" in its cooperation on possible US action and said the US was appreciative of that -- remarks that could be seen as a signal Washington is preparing to dip into its coffers.
Pakistan, among the US' closest allies during the cold war, has been subject to a range of sanctions by the US and others since 1990 as a result of its attempts to develop a nuclear weapons capability. The sanctions were expanded in 1998 after Pakistan and its arch-rival India carried out a series of nuclear tests.
Foreign Minister Abdul Sattar has already made it clear that Islamabad will expect the sanctions to be relaxed or lifted in return for its cooperation on combating terrorism.
"We have had general discussions on the implications of such cooperation [with the US]," he said.
The sanctions have exacerbated the economic and financial difficulties of a country saddled with more than US$30 billion of foreign debt. The IMF suspended its lending and aid programs in 1999 over Islamabad's failure to implement agreed reforms. These have since resumed.
Among Pakistan's business elite, there are many who see the current crisis as a golden opportunity for Pakistan to get back on the right side of the US.
Aziz said he had little doubt that, in the long term, Pakistan would reap the benefits of siding with the world's biggest economy.
RSS