Pakistan foreign minister urges flood aid, patience with Taliban

Pakistan’s foreign minister, Bilawal Bhutto Zardari, urged the international community to provide financial assistance to the country after it was hit by floods. It also urged patience in dealing with the Taliban in Afghanistan.

Pakistan’s foreign minister says the international community should work with Afghanistan’s ruling Taliban, not against them, when it comes to combating foreign extremist groups and the economic and humanitarian crises in that country — even as many U.S. officials say the Taliban have proved themselves unworthy of such cooperation.

Bilawal Bhutto Zardari, Pakistan’s top diplomat, spoke to The Associated Press in the final days of a trip to the United Nations General Assembly in New York and to Washington that has focused on trying to draw more world attention to unprecedented flooding that has one-third of his country underwater.

Unrelenting monsoon rains that scientists say are worsened by climate change have killed more than 1,000 people in Pakistan, caused tens of billions of dollars in damage and destroyed much of the country’s staple food and commercial crops.

Pakistan is among many countries hardest-hit by climate change that have become increasingly outspoken in seeking more financial assistance from richer nations. Past and current economic and industrial booms of China, the United States and other leading economies are the biggest contributors to climate change, which is primarily caused by burning fossil fuels.

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The roughly 30 million people in Pakistan reported to be displaced by the floods are “truly paying in the forms of their lives and their livelihoods for the industrialization of other countries,” said Zardari.

“And justice would be that we work together” globally, “that we’re not left alone, to deal with the consequences of this tragedy,” he said.