WASHINGTON, Oct 29: The United States has assured India that it has not yet taken any decision about selling F-16 aircraft to Pakistan. The assurance -- given at a briefing here on Thursday -- followed a demonstration in New York by Indian-Americans against the proposed sale.
"No decisions have been made on the sale of F-16s to Pakistan," said State Department spokesman Richard Boucher when informed about the protest. Indian and US newspapers have been reporting since early this month that a second Bush administration, if he wins next week, will sell the F-16s to Pakistan. The reports said that the US administration planned to sell 18 planes in the first instalment with 62 more to be sold later.
The US sold 40 F-16s to Pakistan between 1983 and 1987, when Islamabad supported Washington's efforts to drive the then Soviet Union out of Afghanistan. But in 1990, Congress passed legislation halting delivery of the jets because the US believed Pakistan was making a nuclear bomb.
Reports that the Bush administration may resume the sale appeared to be vindicated when Rear Admiral Craig McDonald, head of the office of the US defence representative in Pakistan, told a recent Pentagon-organized conference on security cooperation that the Bush administration would go before Congress early next year to seek authorization for the sale.
The Indian lobby on Capitol Hill, however, has vowed to block the sale in the US Senate where India has powerful supporters in both Republican and Democratic parties. New Delhi also has opposed the proposed sale, saying the planes would be used against India.
Last month, Pakistan Air Force chief Air Marshal Kaleem Sadaat told reporters in Karachi that the US had indicated that it would be 'ready next year' to sell F-16s to Pakistan.
An Indian lobby, the Indian American Forum for Political Education (IAFPE), recently wrote a letter to President Bush saying that the proposed sale would be detrimental to furthering Indo-US ties and would fuel arms race in South Asia.
"Supplying sophisticated fighter aircraft to Pakistan will only stoke the flames of arms race in this region," IAFPE president Sudhir Parikh said in the letter to President Bush.
Mr Parikh said while the Forum had supported Mr Bush's bid for a second term in office, "reports of F-16 deliveries to Pakistan would make several members reconsider their endorsement."
Despite the Indian protest, US Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage told a private Pakistani television channel recently that the issue "is still on the table and we have had discussions with the Pakistani authorities about these matters, and I will leave it right there."
A Pentagon official said that although nothing had so far been decided, "that does not mean a decision could not come down at any moment". At Thursday's briefing, Mr Boucher also dismissed questions about news stories alleging that a cache of weapons of mass destruction from Iraq might have been moved to Syria and found their way to Pakistan. "These sorts of rumours have been around for a long time. As far as I know, they have never been corroborated," he said.
