EU offers over $138 mn in aid to Pakistan: Sify News

The European Union (EU) is to give Pakistan over 100 million euros ($138 million) in aid, more than half of it for victims of the recent fighting in the Swat Valley, EU officials said Wednesday at the first ever EU-Pakistan summit here.

'I will be able to announce today more than 100 million euros... because we stand by the Pakistani people,' EU Foreign Affairs Commissioner Benita Ferrero-Waldner said as she arrived for talks with Pakistan's President Asif Ali Zardari.

Czech President Vaclav Klaus, who chaired the summit as the holder of the EU's rotating presidency, said that the EU 'takes Pakistan very seriously' and was 'aware of the tremendous importance Pakistan has in the region'.

But Zardari said that he was most interested in boosting trade relations with the world's largest economic bloc.

'What I need is trade, not aid,' he said before the summit.

Officials from the European Commission, the EU's executive, said that the aid decision was intended to 'help the most vulnerable' among the hundreds of thousands of civilians displaced by fighting between government and Taliban-linked forces in the Swat Valley.

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