Musharraf said the amount received so far was "negligible" but he hoped the rest could be raised at a donors' conference on Saturday to be attended by UN Secretary General Kofi Annan and the heads of world financial and aid groups.

"We have to have 5.2 billion dollars. My expectation of the donor conference is that we should be able to raise this amount," Musharraf told reporters.

"This is now the focus because I don't think that Pakistan can do it alone," he said.

The 7.6-magnitude earthquake on October 8 killed more than 73,000 people in Pakistan and made some three million people homeless. The reconstruction effort has taken on urgency with winter descending on the Himalayan region.

Pakistan could try to cope on its own by "tightening its belt", although this would affect the country's development and social sector, Musharraf said.

He added though, "I don't know why it should come to that.

"If the tsunami or (Hurricane) Katrina can be assisted, why cannot Pakistan be assisted -- we are poorer and the people affected are poorer.

"Is the world community that lacking in conscience?"

The figure of 5.2 billion dollars was based on estimates by UN agencies, the World Bank, the Asian Development Bank and Pakistan released by Musharraf earlier this month.

It included 3.5 billion dollars for reconstruction, 1.5 billion dollars for relief and 100 million dollars for rehabilitation.

Pakistan has however received pledges for only half that, including about 300 million dollars reconstruction of which about 11 million dollars has actually been received.

The president said he would ask sponsors to consider adopting whole communities, with the reconstruction expected to not merely replace what had been destroyed but to improve on it.

Musharraf announced this month that Pakistan had postponed the purchase of F-16 fighters from the United States after the quake.

It had also not yet decided on the one-billion-dollar purchase of a surveillance system from Swedish companies Saab and Ericsson, for which it signed a contract in October, he said Wednesday.

All rights reserved. � 2005 Agence France-Presse. Sections of the information displayed on this page (dispatches, photographs, logos) are protected by intellectual property rights owned by Agence France-Presse. As a consequence, you may not copy, reproduce, modify, transmit, publish, display or in any way commercially exploit any of the content of this section without the prior written consent of Agence France-Presse.

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