David Miliband steps up criticism over Cameron's Pakistan remarks

Shadow foreign secretary David Miliband yesterday stepped up his criticism of David Cameron over Pakistan, just days before the arrival of the country's President on an official trip to the UK.

Asif Ali Zardari is due to arrive in Britain tomorrow for a five-day visit which looks likely to be overshadowed by Mr Cameron's claim that Pakistan was promoting the "export of terror".

The comment has sparked fury in Pakistan, not least because it was made during a visit to the country's arch-rival India.

Demonstrators yesterday burnt an effigy of the Prime Minister in the streets of Karachi, while a top-level meeting between Pakistan's ISI intelligence agency and UK security experts was cancelled in protest. But Mr Zardari has resisted domestic pressure for him to abandon his own visit.

In a speech in the Punjab last Saturday, Pakistani Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gilani said that Mr Cameron's remarks were particularly galling because they were made in India.

And he rebuked the Prime Minister: "In India, you talk about terrorism but you don't say anything about Kashmir. You forgot about the human rights abuses going on there. You should have spoken about that too, so that we in Pakistan would have been satisfied."

Yesterday, Mr Miliband said the Prime Minister should have recognised Pakistan's suffering at the hands of terrorists and the democratic progress achieved in Islamabad over recent years, rather than highlighting allegations of covert support for the Taliban in Afghanistan.

Writing in the Independent on Sunday, he compared the Prime Minister to "a cuttlefish squirting out ink", creating a mess in Britain's foreign policy in his desire to create a splash with his comments about Pakistan and his description of Gaza as a "prison camp".

"Mr Cameron has used the last two weeks to make a verbal splash on foreign policy. Like a cuttlefish squirting out ink, his words were copious and created a mess," said Mr Miliband.

"The mindsets in Israel, Pakistan and Britain have all been given the once-over. But making a splash is not the same as making a difference. That is the real test, not the false trail of whether to speak 'straight' or not."

Answering questions in India last week, Mr Cameron said Pakistan must not be allowed to "look both ways" in the fight against terrorism or to "promote the export of terror whether to India, whether to Afghanistan or to anywhere else in the world".

In Pakistan, his remark was widely interpreted as a response to the leak of thousands of secret documents on the Afghan conflict, which included numerous allegations of collusion between the ISI and the Taliban.

Mr Miliband said: "Bombs and attacks blamed by the Pakistani Government on Taliban and al Qaeda-linked militants have killed more than 3,500 people in the last three years. Benazir Bhutto was killed by terrorism in her own country.

"The Prime Minister, in attacking Pakistan for 'looking both ways', did not tell this side of the story. In highlighting attacks originating from areas like Peshawar, he ignored the murder of people from Peshawar struggling to prevent them. And he showed no understanding of Pakistan's path back to democratic rule in the last two years.

"Better would have been for the Prime Minister to talk as well about ways we can support Pakistan. The level of EU funding in Pakistan is just half a euro per person compared to five to 10 times as much in other parts of the world not only more developed, but less crucial to global security."

Pakistani Information Minister Qamar Zaman Kaira yesterday said Mr Zardari would seek to correct Mr Cameron's "misperception" when the two men meet at Chequers on Friday.

"The President of Pakistan will explain and have a dialogue and good discussion and he will explain the facts to the new Government over here," Mr Kaira told reporters.

"We hope that the new leadership over here, when they get the exact picture, will agree with us."

Pakistan was currently "the biggest victim of terror" and had lost 2,700 soldiers in military offensives against militants in the north-west frontier area bordering Afghanistan, he said.

And he rejected suggestions that the ISI was covertly backing the Taliban against the will of Mr Zardari's Government.

Labour backbencher Khalid Mahmood said that the affair had sparked anger among Britain's million-strong Pakistani commu-nity.

He told Sky News: "A lot of people of Pakistani origin are hugely enflamed by this. They feel the country of their origin has been criticised for no real reason other than point-scoring by David Cameron.

"If you'll excuse the pun, all he's trying to do is curry favour with the Indians."