Washington, Aug. 22 : US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has urged Pakistan to spend more on education and girls rather than keep focusing on military expenditure.

In an interview with the New York Times magazine to be published on Sunday, Clinton said Pakistan’s fight against extremism would have been in much better shape if Islamabad would have invested more on schools and girls in the country.

She said that even though Pakistan has not invested the amount of money the US would have liked it to spend on education, there is still time to make a difference in the life of poor families of the country, especially after the US, which has pumped more than seven billion dollars in that country since 9/11, has revamped its policies.

“When I think about the extraordinarily accomplished Pakistanis in the professions, in medicine, in education, I think it is certainly the case that if Pakistan had invested more in the education of children so that poor families would not have sent their boys off to be educated by extremists, it might well have made a difference,” she said.

“And it still can, because that''s part of our approach now,” the News quoted Clinton, as saying.

Following President Barack Obama’s revamped AFPAK strategy, Washington has pledged 7.5 billion dollars to Pakistan as ‘humanitarian aid’ over the next five years. (ANI)