U.S. Holding Back 'Some' Pakistan Military Aid
The United States is holding back some military aid to Pakistan, President Barack Obama's chief of staff confirmed Sunday, after a New York Times report said $800 million was being withheld.
"They've taken some steps that have given us reason to pause on some of the aid which we're giving to the military, and we're trying to work through that," William Daley told ABC's "This Week With Christiane Amanpour."
U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton had warned last month that the United States could slow down U.S. military aid to Pakistan unless it took unspecified steps to help the United States.
There has been increasing pressure in Washington on the Obama administration -- which provided $2.7 billion in security assistance last year to Islamabad -- to hold back on aid.
Growing concerns over collusion with militant groups since it emerged in early May that al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden had been hiding out in a garrison city near Islamabad has been compounded by more recent accusations that Pakistan's intelligence services approved a journalist's killing.
According to The New York Times, about $800 million in military aid and equipment, or over one-third of the more than $2 billion in annual U.S. security assistance to Pakistan, could be affected by the suspension.
Asked by ABC about the report, Daley did not dispute the figures and confirmed that some military aid was now being withheld.
"The truth of the matter is, our relationship with Pakistan is very complicated," he said.
"Obviously there's still a lot of pain that the political system in Pakistan is feeling by virtue of the raid that we did to get Osama bin Laden. Something that the president felt strongly about. We have no regrets over.
"The Pakistani relationship is difficult, but it must be made to work over time. But until we get through these difficulties, we'll hold back some of the money that the American taxpayers have committed to give."
The New York Times said the suspended aid included about $300 million to reimburse Pakistan for some of the costs of deploying more than 100,000 soldiers along the Afghan border, as well as hundreds of millions of dollars in training assistance and military hardware.
The moves come amid intensifying debate within the Obama administration about how best to change the behavior of one of America's most important counterterrorism allies, according to the Times.
On June 23, Clinton told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee that unless certain unspecified steps were taken by Pakistan, the United States was not "prepared to continue providing (aid) at the pace we were providing it."
"We're trying to ... play this orchestra the best we can, where we ... look in one direction and say to those who we think are largely responsible for the difficulties we know that exist within Pakistan ... you can't continue doing that," she said.
Clinton did say that U.S. officials did not believe top Pakistani officials knew that Osama bin Laden had been hiding in Abbottabad, the garrison town just north of Islamabad where raiding U.S. forces killed him on May 1.
"In looking at every scrap of information we have, we think that the highest levels of the government were genuinely surprised," Clinton said.
But the U.S. killing of bin Laden, which was done without tipping off Pakistan in advance, was a clear demarcation line in relations between the two countries, which since then have grown more tense.
Some of the aid to Pakistan, the Times reports, like night-vision goggles, radios and helicopter spare parts, cannot be sent because Pakistan has denied visas to the American trainers needed to operate the equipment.
Other aid no longer moving to Pakistan includes equipment like rifles, body armor, ammunition and bomb disposal gear that Islamabad has since refused following its expulsion from the country in recent weeks of more than 100 Army special forces trainers.
Military sales to Pakistan, like F-16 fighters, and non-military aid, has not been affected, according to officials interviewed by the Times.
Source: Agence France Presse
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