Washington: Pakistan has blamed India as the Obama administration has hold back aid to Islamabad, amid calls in the US for a re-evaluation of Washington's policy towards a country that continues to foster terrorists.
A donor conference in Islamabad, aimed at extracting $380 million from the world community to rehabilitate Pakistan's internally displaced people (IDP), effectively collapsed after the US reportedly didn't come through with its commitment to pledge $250 million -a part of the $532 million under the Kerry-Lugar assistance package that the US ambassador to Pakistan Richard Olson had reportedly assured the Pakistani finance minister the US would disburse.
“In recent days, however, the US has come under sustained diplomatic pressure from India over its financial assistance to Pakistan. New Delhi wants the US to stop all aid to Pakistan until terrorists it accuses of having masterminded attacks on Indian soil are caught and punished,” the Express Tribune newspaper reported on the weekend even as US officials in Washington said the Obama regime had not notified Congress for any aid to Pakistan but “obviously there'll be additional funding.”
The reading in Indian quarters from that remark by a state department official is that the US is merely holding back aid for tactical reasons till secretary of state John Kerry completes his visit to India for the Vibrant Gujarat Summit on the sidelines of the Pravasi Bharatiya Divas, while also setting the stage for Obama's R-Day visit to India.
Typical of their sense of entitlement even while begging for aid, Pakistani finance ministry officials have contested the US claim that Washington had provided approximately $100 million for IDPs, saying that was the amount pledged in the past for wheat procurement and processing. But there is growing disquiet in the US, too, regarding Washington's unending and fruitless aid to Pakistan that by some accounts add up to nearly $30 billion since 911, with the NYT Editorial Board quoting US officials that “it makes no sense to subsidize Pakistan's policy failures.”
