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Washington-Pakistan is on a rapid trajectory to failure as a democratic and stable state, and needs a boost of $4 billion in aid and loans each year to begin turning around, a private foreign affairs group has concluded."Time is running out," said the Atlantic Council, which called for more training and deploying another 15,000 police within six months to bring law and order to the country. "Given the tools and the financing, Pakistan can turn back from the brink," the report said."But for that to happen it needs help now." The Pakistan government has six to 12 months to implement economic and security policies "or face the very real prospect of considerable domestic and political turbulence," the report said. The United States has given Pakistan about $12.3 billion in military and economic aid. But the Government Accountability Office says the United States lacks a coordinated strategy in disbursing the aid and warns that al-Qaida continues to operate freely in Pakistan's unpoliced tribal areas. Vice President Joseph Biden, D-Del., the former chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, and Sen. Richard Lugar, R-Ind, the panel's senior Republican, proposed last summer authorizing $7.5 billion over five years in nonmilitary aid for Pakistan. Similar legislation sponsored by the new committee chairman, Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass., and Lugar is expected this year. Kerry and former Sen. Chuck Hagel, R-Neb., are the Atlantic Council's honorary chairmen. Hagel, having left the Senate, is now council chairman. The Obama administration, meanwhile, has begun a policy review this week with senior officials from Pakistan and Afghanistan....AP reporter Anne Flaherty contributed to this report.
By Barry Schweid, Associated Press
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