WASHINGTON, Nov 12: Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz said in an interview broadcast on Sunday that his country does not allow the United States to use unmanned aircraft to fire missiles into Pakistan to kill terrorists.

The prime minister said Pakistan is ''very capable of tackling such activities ourselves. ''US President George W. Bush has said he would ''absolutely'' order military operations inside Pakistan if Al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden or other top terrorists were found to be hiding there.

Mr Aziz said in an interview conducted on Friday with CNN's ''Late Edition'' that Pakistan is ''committed to fighting terrorism, but it has to be fought together. And if we go into each other's countries and take unilateral action, that does not help the cause of fighting terrorism.''

In January, 13 civilians died when an unmanned US drone fired missiles into a Pakistani village in an unsuccessful attempt to hit Al Qaida deputy chief Ayman al-Zawahri.

Pakistani critics say the military helped US forces based in Afghanistan carry out an airstrike on a religious school that killed 80 people last month. Mr

Aziz said claims that Taliban supreme leader Mullah Omar is based in Pakistan are ''totally incorrect.'' ''We understand that the command and control network of the Taliban is very much deep inside Afghanistan,'' he said.

On Osama, he said: ''We have no clue where he is. If he were ever in our territory and we found out, we would go after him.''

ERADICATING POVERTY: Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz on Sunday urged the world community to fulfil its obligations and work together with sincerity and commitment to eradicate poverty in the world by creating employment and other income generating opportunities for the poor.

In his keynote address at the Global Micro-Credit Summit at Halifax, Canada, Mr Aziz proposed a five-point strategy for promoting and spreading micro-credit in countries with high poverty levels.He called for fighting poverty from a common platform by pooling energy and resources of the international community to rid the world of poverty, hunger, disease and deprivation.

The prime minister said governments in developing countries must demonstrate a strong political commitment towards supporting microfinance coupled with imparting technical and vocational skills to the poor for sustainable income generation, involvement of multiple actors and institutions to ensure microfinance outreach to target groups, and securing commitments at the global level to ensure macro-economic and regulatory frameworks to support the growth and mainstreaming of microfinance into the financial sector as a commercially-viable proposition.

He said extremism bred in a festering sense of injustice and denial of economic opportunity.

He said there was a need for a lasting and sustainable poverty reduction strategy which should focus on creating income-generating avenues for the poor and disenfranchised, particularly women.

He said Pakistan had successfully implemented a stabilisation programme and wide- ranging structural reforms which had put the economy back on the track of sustainable growth and poverty alleviation.

Pakistan's poverty reduction strategy has brought down the number of people below the poverty line from 34.5 per cent in 2001 to 23.9 per cent in 2005, he said.

He said the Fiscal Responsibility Law had been promulgated to ensure fiscal discipline and obviate future policy slippages.

Mr Aziz said Pakistan had implemented a poverty reduction strategy, built on four pillars of accelerating growth, investment in human development, promoting self-employment through microfinance and social safety nets for the most vulnerable groups.

He said the government had established strong foundations of micro-finance in the formal sector along with extending support to civil society institutions. Four specialised microfinance banks had been established and a law promulgated to provide separate regulatory framework for micro-credit institutions.

He said Pakistan was combining micro-credit with skill development and social mobilisation as a comprehensive strategy to enable the poor to make the best use of borrowed resources.

Appreciating the efforts of Nobel Laureate Prof Yunus in the field of micro-credit, Mr Aziz said he had established a successful model of the Grameen Bank of Bangladesh.

He also appreciated the contribution made by the Micro-credit Summit Campaign since 1997 and welcomed the Summit’s initiative to extend the campaign till 2015.

The prime minister said war, illiteracy, poverty, pandemics, social injustice and intolerance still haunted the world.

Referring to measures taken by the government to eradicate poverty, he said his government had implemented a reform agenda, covering all aspects of life; political, administrative, social and economic, which had brought about a positive change in the country.

He said political institutions had been reformed, women and minorities given greater representations, democratic norms and practices institutionalised, and accountability and transparency ensured in all departments.

We have all the ingredients of a sustainable democracy; a vibrant opposition, a free media, an independent judiciary and, above all, an informed public opinion, he said.

He claimed that Pakistan was now one of the fastest growing economies in the region and hoped to sustain a high growth trajectory of 6 to 8 per cent. He said the government had adopted a variety of institutional models to increase the coverage and outreach of micro-credit to the poor.

He said the government was encouraging the private sector to come forward, and the regulatory role of the central bank was that of a policy maker, enabler and facilitator.

He termed the start of Greenfield micro-finance banks, entry of commercial banks, diversification of products, manifold increases in the number of borrowers and development of distribution network as conduits for income generation, particularly for women, landless farmers and workers without assets.—AP/APP