WASHINGTON - Two influential senators are expected to file legislation in the coming days that would triple nonmilitary US aid to Pakistan to $1.5 billion a year and include $5 billion to stave off an imminent economic crisis. The move is part of an increasing awareness within the Obama administration of Pakistan's precarious position - beset by economic collapse, political weakness, and a spreading insurgency - and that more than military operations will be needed to build a stable state capable of beating back militants in the long term, according to a prominent newspaper. "If we fail, we face a truly frightening prospect: terrorist sanctuary, economic meltdown, and spiraling radicalism, all in a nation with 170 million inhabitants and a full arsenal of nuclear weapons," said Sen. John Kerry, a Democrat has said while releasing a report about Pakistan. Along with Sen. Richard Lugar, a Republican, Senator Kerry is a key supporter of the expected new legislation on Pakistan. It mirrors a plan that Vice President Joe Biden proposed last year when he was still a senator. Then, as now, it is a thinly veiled criticism of the Bush administration's Pakistan policy, which focused aid and relations on ousted military leader Gen. Pervez Musharraf, The Christian Science Monitor said Monday. Last week, the newspaper pointed out that Pentagon officials emerged from a meeting in Washington with Pakistan's Army Chief of Staff Gen. Ashfaq Kayani to say they supported a more "comprehensive" strategy for US relations with Pakistan - albeit one that encompassed smarter and more effective military assistance. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton sounded a similar note when she met with Pakistani and Afghan officials last week. She announced that trilateral US-Afghanistan-Pakistan talks will become a regular feature of the Obama administration's plan for region. It further points to the Obama administration's desire to look beyond the military alone for solutions to the conflict spanning the Afghan-Pakistan border - an area he and others consider the epicenter of global terrorism. Meanwhile, Foreign Minister Shah Mehmood Qureshi has said reconciliation, development and political engagement need to be brought into play to secure people's support the plan to curb violent extremism in the long-term perspective. In an interview published in an American newspaper, Qureshi favoured the use of force where required but pointed out that the military option alone cannot resolve the problem. "When orce is required and when it is necessary, it will be used," the foreign minister told Pittsburg Tribune-Review during his visit to Washington last week for participation in three-way deliberations on finding an effective way forward in the restive Pak-Afghan border region. But "reconciliation, socio-economic development, political engagement- these are the prongs that need to be utilized to reach out to the people and win them over, and we aim to do that," he added, emphasizing the criticality of having the people rally behind anti-terrorism struggle. Qureshi welcomed the Obama administration being in a listening mode during the trilateral consultations engaging two "principal players." - Pakistan and Afghanistan - and said he would go back to his country with "new hope" for the direction of future strategy. "We have a common objective and we need a common strategy --- if nations that have common values and principles could forge an alliance to defeat fascism and communism, then we can do it again and we can forge an alliance to defeat terrorism." The Christian Science Monitor, citing James Dobbins, a South Asia analyst at RAND Corporation, a security consultcy group, said transforming the US-Pakistani relationship from a personal relationship with a military leader to a long-term relationship with an elected Pakistani government will require patience. "This transformation won't change the relationship with [Pakistan] as quickly as we'd like," he says. "But both the increase in aid and a new direction are necessary for the stability of Afghanistan and critical for Pakistan itself." The change in direction comes as the Obama administration gets its first taste of the complexities of Pakistan, the Monitor said. The president's special envoy to Pakistan and Afghanistan, Richard Holbrooke, offered unvarnished words for Pakistan's recent decision to bow to Taliban demands and cede a strategically important swatch of the nation to Islamic law, it said. Richard Holbrooke said the accord leaves the Swat Valley in the hands of "murderers, thugs, and militants."