WASHINGTON, June 24: The United States has released and approved more than $523 million to Pakistan over the past two days, doing away with the impression that Washington may bring financial restrictions on Islamabad to spur it to do more in the war against terror.
The US House of Representatives approved $150 million of economic assistance to Pakistan on Tuesday, which is additional to the aid Pakistan gets under a $3 billion package signed during President Pervez Musharraf’s visit to Camp David in 2003.On Monday, the United States transferred $373.841 million to Pakistan from the coalition support fund. The fund is used for reimbursing Pakistan for the expenses it incurs during anti-terrorism operations along the Afghan border.
“We are still looking forward to a long-term commitment from the United States, manifested in a democracy dividend of at least $1.5 billion a year as proposed by two of the wisest senators of the US, Biden and Lugar,” said Ambassador Husain Haqqani while commenting on the release of US funds to Pakistan.
“All disagreements between Pakistan and the US will be resolved. And we will not let anything come between our visions of a strategic partnership between the two democracies,” he said.
The release of $373 million from the coalition support fund clears dues up to November 2007. Pakistan is still to be reimbursed for November 2007 to March 2008 while Islamabad has not yet submitted bills for the March-May period.
Pakistan receives between $80 to 90 million a month from the coalition support fund. But recently, the reimbursements faced severe criticism from US lawmakers who claimed that Pakistan was using this money to buy weapons that can only be used in a conventional war against India and not for fighting insurgents.
Islamabad countered the argument by saying that reimbursement is not aid and Pakistan is free to use this money for whatever it wants to purchase.
The US administration initially accepted Pakistan’s argument but later tightened the reimbursement procedure following claims in the US Congress that Islamabad was inflating its expenses.
The US administration remains divided on this issue.
