WASHINGTON: The US Congress sent a mixed signal to Pakistan on Thursday, rejecting one move to restrict aid to the country while supporting the other.The development came amid a warning from the new CIA chief not to push Pakistan too hard as the country had already poked “a lot of short sticks in hornets’ nests”.
One of the bills taken up by the House Foreign Affairs Committee would bar security and civilian aid to Pakistan unless the Obama administration certified that Pakistan was making progress on fighting terrorism.
Moved by the committee’s chairperson Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, the bill requires the US secretary of state to submit an annual certificate to Congress that Pakistan is pursuing terrorists and helping investigate how Osama bin Laden managed to hide for years inside the country.
But the panel rejected a more far-reaching effort targeting US aid to Pakistan. The committee defeated an amendment by Congressman Dana Rohrabacher, a Republican, to cut off all assistance to Pakistan.
The vote was 39-5. Mr Rohrabacher had moved the bill on May 5, three days after Osama bin Laden was killed in a US raid in Abbottabad.
Congresswoman Ros-Lehtinen’s legislation, however, goes beyond terrorism and covers nuclear proliferation as well.
This legislation “puts the government of Pakistan on notice that they will be held to account if they continue to refuse to cooperate with our efforts to eliminate the nuclear black market, destroy the remaining elements of Osama bin Laden’s network, and vigorously pursue our counterterrorism objectives.”
The Obama administration opposed both the moves saying that the aid was critical to building Pakistan’s civilian institutions and to battling the Taliban and Al Qaeda.
Restrictions on other countries
The committee also placed restrictions on US aid to Egypt, Lebanon, Yemen and the Palestinian Authority and reduced US assistance to the UN by 25 per cent.
Another adopted amendment would prohibit any foreign assistance to countries that oppose the US in the United Nations.
Overall, the committee sliced $6.4 billion from President Obama’s $51 billion request for 2012 for the State Department and foreign operations. The bill now goes to the Republican-dominated full House for an expected easy adoption. But it also needs the Senate’s approval before it becomes a law. US legal experts say that it cannot pass the Democrat-dominated Senate. President Barack Obama is also a Democrat and the Democrats see the bill as an effort to restrict his powers to make foreign policies.
“We’re thankful to the House Foreign Affairs Committee for defeating an amendment to the Foreign Assistance authorisation bill that would have restricted all US security assistance to Pakistan,” said Husain Haqqani, Pakistan’s Ambassador to the US.
“US-Pakistan relations face many challenges and we look forward to working together in addressing concerns of the US Congress,” he said.
“Our efforts to present Pakistan's case before Congress and to explain our difficulties and limitations continue.”
Mr Haqqani noted that Pakistan would “still have several hurdles to climb and many misgivings to address before the Congressional process of aid authorisation and appropriation is completed”.
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