Musharraf said he was delaying the purchase of 77 F-16 fighters because of the need for rebuilding large swaths of northern Pakistan flattened by the Oct. 8 temblor, which killed about 80,000 people. Analysts estimate the planes' cost at $5 billion to $10 billion, a steep tab for a nation struggling to provide basic education and health care under the best of circumstances.
''I am going to postpone that. . . . We want to bring maximum relief and reconstruction efforts," Musharraf said of the F-16 purchase. He did not say when the sale would go through.
The planes have become a symbol of Pakistan's improving relations with the United States after years in the political wilderness. Washington blocked the sale in the 1990s as punishment for Pakistan's nuclear program, but reversed its position after intense lobbying by Musharraf and approved the sale in March.
Musharraf also urged the world to be as generous with long-term help for victims as it was with Asia's tsunami last December and Hurricane Katrina in August.
''When we are talking of the bigger issue of reconstruction and rehabilitation which is now to come, there we expect the equal amount of assistance [that the] tsunami and Katrina got," he said.
He suggested later in a BBC interview that the world had forgotten earthquake victims largely because there were no Westerners among them. ''I would say the damage here is much more [than the tsunami], the magnitude of the calamity here is much more," Musharraf said.
The South Asia earthquake left more than 3 million homeless, most in the Kashmir region claimed by Pakistan and India, but the Pakistan side was hit harder.
