WASHINGTON, Oct 12: Extremism and ‘economic woes’ top the list of a host of ‘very bad challenges’ that US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice believes are confronting Pakistan.

Ms Rice, however, assured Pakistan that the United States would remain engaged with the country to help overcome these problems.

The secretary, who will return to academia completing her eight years with the Bush Administration in January, identified the India-Pakistan conflict as a problem that had kept her away from her family on the Christmas Eve in 2001.

Her farewell interview to Fox News, broadcast on Sunday, focussed on two major problems confronting US policy-makers, situations in Pakistan and North Korea.While Ms Rice presented the US decision to remove North Korea from its terrorist list as a success story of the Bush administration, Pakistan came across as a nation which still faced “a lot of very bad challenges”.

But the top US diplomat said that her country had a common goal with Pakistan to deal with violent extremism and Washington was actively engaged in efforts to help the democratic government overcome economic problems it faced.

“Pakistan has also a very serious terrorism problem, very serious,” said Ms Rice while referring to recent wave of bombings in the country. “And it’s not just a problem from our point of view that what happens across the Pakistan-Afghanistan border, or the presence of Al Qaeda there that could be a threat to US interests. It’s also, obviously, a threat to Pakistan, because there have been bombings in Pakistan. There was, of course, the assassination of (former prime minister) Benazir Bhutto — and so we have a common goal with Pakistan to deal with the extremism and with terrorism.”

While praising the return of democracy in Pakistan, Ms Rice said that the United States played an active role in ensuring that “there would be a civilian government and the end of military rule” in the country after 10 years.

“Now they have had elections, now they have an elected president, President (Asif Ali) Zardari with whom President (George Bush) met recently and with whom I met recently in New York. We are working with that government,” she added.