By Susan Cornwell WASHINGTON, Jan 12 (Reuters) - The incoming chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Sen. John Kerry, said on Monday he will push for tripling non-military U.S. aid to Pakistan, putting that country and Afghanistan at the top of his panel's agenda in the new Congress. In an interview with Reuters, Kerry said he also hoped to revive the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, which would commit the United States to refrain from nuclear testing. The Senate rejected the treaty in 1999. Kerry, who visited Pakistan in December and met President Asif Ali Zardari, wants to advance legislation similar to a Senate measure drafted last year by Vice President-elect Joe Biden that increases economic assistance to Pakistan to help fight terrorism in the nuclear-armed state. "I think it is essential," Kerry said in the telephone interview. "They (Pakistan) have a huge economic crisis. If anything winds up being one of the triggers for chaos in the country, it's going to be the economic implosion, as much as anything else." Biden, a senator from Delaware and the outgoing chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee, takes up his new office with President-elect Barack Obama next week. He visited both Afghanistan and Pakistan in the last few days. The Pakistan aid bill Biden authored last year with Indiana Republican Sen. Richard Lugar would have authorized a tripling of nonmilitary aid to Islamabad, to $1.5 billion annually, for five years. The cash was to go to help improve schools, build clinics, drill wells and reform police in Pakistan. In his former post as a senator from Illinois, Obama also signed on as a co-sponsor. "We will be reviewing that ... we are going to be focusing on that very quickly," said Kerry, a Massachusetts Democrat. The Biden-Lugar measure was passed by the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in July but never got a vote in the full Senate. "Look, we can spend $12 billion a month in Iraq, or we can spend over a couple of years $1.5 billion to reduce the potential of terror in the very place where the top terrorists live," Kerry said. "It's not a very complicated equation as far as I'm concerned." POOR BORDER REGIONS The United States has spent billions of dollars in recent years helping Pakistan fight al Qaeda and the Taliban along remote borders with Afghanistan. But experts say Washington also needs to shift its focus from the needs of Pakistan's military to those of its population, especially in the poor border regions where much of the fighting is. In recent months, bombings and kidnappings in the southwest Asia region have increased U.S. concern about extremism there. A suicide truck bomb killed over 50 people at the Islamabad Marriott in September, and India blamed Pakistani militants for attacks that killed 179 people in the Indian city of Mumbai in November. Kerry said that Pakistan as well as Afghanistan, where the United States plans to send more troops to quell an insurgency, "are going to need some very rapid attention." Other items on the Foreign Relations committee agenda will include the Middle East, Iraq, Iran, Syria, Russia, China and nuclear non-proliferation, Kerry said. He hoped the panel could take up the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty "at the appropriate moment." During the presidential campaign, Obama pledged to reach out to the Senate to secure the ratification of the CTBT at the "earliest practical date." (Editing by Doina Chiacu)
Supporters of Pakistan Muslim League burn an effigy of Israel's Prime Minister Ehud Olmert during a protest in Lahore January 12, 2009 against Israel's attacks on Gaza. REUTERS/Mohsin Raza (PAKISTAN) ...
