ISLAMABAD, 7 August 2007 — Pakistan yesterday said that the new US legislation tying aid to Islamabad’s performance in fighting militants threatens to harm security cooperation between the two countries. It also rejected allegations the country has become a safe sanctuary for militants.
Pakistani officials have grown increasingly annoyed at a wave of recent criticism from Washington and US presidential candidates that has centered around the assertion that Al-Qaeda has regrouped in the tribal regions along Pakistan’s border with Afghanistan. “There is no Al-Qaeda or Taleban safe haven in Pakistan,” Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Tasnim Aslam said at a weekly briefing.
Tasnim also reiterated Pakistan’s criticism of a bill signed by US President George W. Bush on Friday that requires the president to confirm that Pakistan is making progress in combating Al-Qaeda and Taleban inside its territory before the United States provides aid to the Muslim nation. Putting such conditions on aid “is in no way conducive to the promotion of a healthy relationship” between Pakistan and the United States, Tasnim said.
“If assistance is curtailed it would surely damage the kind of relationship that our two countries desire to build,” she said, adding that Pakistan-US cooperation was in the interest of ensuring regional and global peace and security. Pakistan has received billions in US aid since joining it in the war on terror in late 2001 and has deployed about 90,000 troops to the border region near Afghanistan.
But the US has strongly criticized a September 2006 peace deal with pro-Taleban militants that reduced the Pakistan Army’s presence in restive North Waziristan.
The US National Intelligence Estimate last month indicated that Al-Qaeda may be regrouping in the region because the peace deal allowed more freedom for militants to operate.
