WASHINGTON - US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said Monday that the impression prevailing in Pakistan that the the Bush administration had been supportive of the military government without caring about democracy was "simply isn't true." "While we felt that we had to work with the (Pervez) Musharraf government for counterterrorism, but also in helping (President) Musharraf to bring Pakistan back from the edge of going over to extremism with his policies of enlightened moderation, I think we struck the balance properly in Pakistan", she said in an effort to appease public opinion in Pakistan. "With the Pakistanis having made the transition, we can do more ... to help sustain democratic institutions in Pakistan and to work toward that. And we're, in fact, looking at what kind of assistance that might require," she told the advisory committee on democracy promotion at the State Department. The top US diplomat said that Washington consistently encouraged free and fair elections in Pakistan and appreciated the outcome of February 18 polls in which the moderate forces gained victory over extremism. She particularly noted the defeat of extremists in the frontier areas bordering Afghanistan. She said the US has a perception problem in Pakistan that it did not care about democracy and citing US support for democracy and fair and free elections stressed that is not true. Rice said the US had significant funding for education programs in Pakistan, to try and modernize the Pakistani curriculum, to try to bring the madrassas under government control. "We worked on all of these programmes with the Pakistan people at the same time that we worked on counterterrorism," Rice said.