August 9, 2002	Friday	Jamadi-ul-Awwal 29,1423

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NEW YORK, Aug 8: Recent reports from Washington suggest that the US administration has initiated the process of re-arming Pakistan once again, reminiscent of the mid-80s when the US supplied it billions of dollars worth of arms, the Financial Times said in a report on Thursday.

The paper said that after a long gap of more than four years during which no proposal for transfer of defence items to Pakistan was made — from early 1998 to mid 2002 — the US State Department has of late been approving licenses for transfer of such items to Pakistan in unprecedented numbers.

However, the paper noted that as a result of the events in Afghanistan, the United Sates president waived all these sanctions operating on Pakistan based on the waiver authority of October 1999 and the Brownback Bill of October 2001 (PL 107-57).

As a result, limited one-time supplies of military items were allowed until November 2002, and thereafter, the complete range of military supplies and assistance, unencumbered by any legislative restriction.

In short, after Nov 21, 2002, there will be no restriction whatsoever on any type of military assistance or supply from the US to Pakistan, the paper said.

The FT says that in the week of July 15, 2002, the last week for which data is available, 23 license approvals were forwarded to the US Congress, many of them for items relating to F-16, transfers of which had been prohibited by various acts of the Congress from early 90s onwards.

In the subsequent weeks, for which public data has not yet been released, indications are that additional approvals for such transfers have been continuing at a similar rate. The F-16s in the Pakistan Air Force (PAF) inventory, for example, are the front-line aircraft of the PAF modified for delivery of nuclear weapons.

In addition, there are a number of other factors that are likely to intensify the US supply of military hardware to Pakistan. The US-Pakistan Defence Consultative Group (DCG) suspended in 1998 has been revived and significantly the US administration has made the first budgetary request for FMF (Foreign Military Financing) assistance to Pakistan, since 1990.

The situation will become even more critical in the coming months when the current restrictions on military transfers to Pakistan will all be lifted, after which there will be no bar on any type of military transfers or assistance to Pakistan.

The security implications of such unbridled military transfers for Indian security need hardly be emphasized. That being the case, it is not difficult to envisage the serious effects of such transfers on the ongoing efforts at improving the bilateral Indo-US relations, the paper said.