Smith urges Pakistan's Zardari to focus on security
Posted
Australia has welcomed the democratic resolution of Pakistan's leadership as it urged the country's new president to focus on security issues, particularly in the Afghan border region.
Asif Ali Zardari, whose wife Benazir Bhutto was assassinated nine months ago, has secured a large win in Pakistan's presidential elections.
"That's good in the sense the Pakistani democratic and parliamentary process has resolved that without a need for intervention from the military," he told told Sky News," Foreign Minister Stephen Smith told Sky News.
"We hope now that the Pakistani Government and political system can now start to focus on the very serious political and economic, and social and strategic and security problems that Pakistan has, particularly abutting the Pakistan Afghanistan border, which bring very deleterious consequences for our troops in Afghanistan."
Australia has about 1,000 troops in Pakistan's neighbour Afghanistan.
Last week, nine Australian special forces soldiers were injured in an ambush in southern Afghanistan, the largest combat casualty toll suffered by Australian soldiers since the Vietnam war.
- AFP
Search for news
ABC News Online takes a look at the big stories from 2008.
