The financial cost of the South Asian earthquake will be more than 5 billion US dollars, Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf said in an interview published in a British daily on Wednesday.

President Musharraf said that he would mobilize the youth for a joint reconstruction drive in the quake zone with the military.

According to local TV reports, Musharraf defended his handling of the country's worst natural disaster, saying the government "had done a good, if not a very good, job."

Responding to the opposition criticism of the government's failure in handling the Oct. 8 crisis, Musharraf said that any civilian government would definitely have called the military to meet the crisis situation, adding that his holding of the army chief and president offices helped mobilize the army.

Source: Xinhua