WASHINGTON: The United States today [March 14] eased its embargo on arms shipments to India and Pakistan, opening the way for the shipment to Pakistan of armou­red personnel carriers, spare military parts, parachutes and aircraft engines. The move would not alter the ratio of military strength on the Sub-continent, where the Soviet Union has become a major supplier of arms to India, State Department officials said.

The lifting of the total embargo, imposed during the 1971 Indo-Pakistan war, means that the United States will return to its partial embargo on arms to the Sub-continent. State Department … said Pakistan will now be able to receive from the United States the 1,100,000 dollars … worth of arms it had contracted to purchase before the start of the 1971 war, but which were held up in US ports when the total embargo was imposed. The shipment includes what the [US] considers “non-lethal weapons”. — News agencies

[Meanwhile, as reported by news agencies from New Delhi,] Foreign Minister Sardar Swaran Singh warned … that a resumption of arms supplies to Pakistan by the US would “jeopardise the process of normalisation, and adversely affect the chances of establishment of durable peace in the Sub-continent.”

Published in Dawn, March 15th, 2023