Holbrooke seeks Europe aid for Pak floods

PARIS: The US envoy for Pakistan on Wednesday urged Europe to help boost aid to the victims of devastating floods there that have left millions homeless.

"The situation in Pakistan is extraordinary. An area larger than Italy was put under water, over 20 million people were affected," Richard Holbrooke told reporters in Paris.

"The amount of money to reconstruct what has been destroyed in Pakistan is going to be in the tens of billions of dollars," he said. "People are desperate to go back to their land and homes but there are no homes to go back to."

Holbrooke was to meet French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner before visiting officials in Brussels.

He also met officials in Berlin on Tuesday and said he would head to Rome on Monday for a meeting on Afghanistan with NATO, UN and US military officials and representatives of Muslim countries.

Holbrooke denied any link between his efforts for Pakistan and the US fight to stamp out Taliban and Al-Qaeda extremists in northwestern tribal regions near the border with Afghanistan.

"We are not helping in the flood zones as part of the war against the Taliban. We are doing it because it's the right thing to do for 20 million people," Holbrooke said. "It's not strategic, it's not political, it's humanitarian."