Former US secretary of state Madeline Albright, who has often described Pakistan as "international migraine", has said that the Washington needs to "repair" its relationship with the Islamabad.
"I think that Pakistan provides more problems than any other country," Albright said testifying before the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, which had convened a hearing on engaging with the Muslim community.
"I have often said it has everything that gives you an international migraine. It has nuclear weapons, poverty, extremism, corruption and is in a very difficult location - and a weak government," she said.
Albright, who was recently in Pakistan, said the world appears different from Islamabad than it does from Washington.
"We cannot expect Pakistani leaders to place their interests beneath ours," she said.
Observing that no country has suffered more from violent extremism, she said Pakistan's primary challenge is governance. "Nothing improves the climate for extremism more than the failure of official institutions to fill such basic needs as security, education and health care," she said.
"I do think that we would be better in terms of providing assistance that would work on economic issues, education, health and various issues," she said, adding the question is how to decide what the amount is, and then to whom to give it.
However, Albright said it would be hard to show immediate results. "The taxpayers of the US, who are being asked to do many things at the moment, will want to know what you are getting for that dollar. But I think it is very well invested," she argued.
"Education, for instance, because part of the problem is that the madrassas are educating some of the young people in ways that are not helpful in all of this. So, I think money into those particular programs, well directed through maybe nongovernmental organizations - and then some aspects governance - to help governments and institution building is very important," Albright said.
The former secretary of state, however, cautioned that in trying to help, the US should bear in mind the distinction between the different and the dangerous.
In Pakistan's northwest, people ordinarily worship, dress and think in ways unfamiliar to those in the US. This does not make them a threat, for their political horizons tend to be local, she observed.
"That changes, however, when we hurt wrong people. A family whose loved ones are accidentally killed by an American bomb will no longer have a local mindset. So we have a very difficult line to walk," she said.
"Military operations against hardcore elements are still essential, but we will never win if through our actions we inadvertently create more terrorists than we defeat," she said.
