NEW YORK: The Bush administration plans to shift nearly USD 230 million in aid to Pakistan from counter-terrorism programmes to upgrading the country’s aging F-16 attack planes, drawing flak from US lawmakers.
In a two-page notification to Congress, the State Department said that upgrading the avionics, electronics and radar systems of Pakistan’s older F-16s would “increase the survivability of the aircraft in a hostile environment” and make the “F-16s a more valuable counter-terrorism asset that operates safely during day and night operations.” However, the proposed upgradation of F-16’s which Pakistan prizes more for their contribution to its military rivalry with India than for fighting insurgents along its Afghan border greeted with dismay and anger by US lawmakers who may block the move, the New York Times said.
The notification said the modernised systems would also increase the accuracy of the F-16s’ support of Pakistani ground troops, lessening the risks of civilian casualties.
Lawmakers and their aides were quoted as saying that F-16s do not help the counter-terrorism campaign and defy the administration’s urgings that Pakistan increase pressure on al Qaeda and Taliban fighters in its tribal areas.
The timing of the action, the paper said, also caught lawmakers off guard, prompting some of them to suspect that the deal was meant to curry favour with new Pakistani Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gilani who will meet with President George W Bush in Washington next week. The debate over the F-16 financing comes at a time when Congress has grown increasingly frustrated with the administration’s Pakistan policy, arguing it has been weighted too heavily on security assistance.
The US has given more than USD 10 billion in military aid to Pakistan since the September 11 attacks. Of that amount, USD 5.5 billion was specifically intended to reimburse the counterinsurgency efforts by the Pakistani Army, but Congressional auditors have said that Pakistan did not spend much of that money on counterinsurgency.
The move could also be aimed at easing tensions over the 11 members of the Pakistani paramilitary forces killed in an American air strike along the Afghan border last month. The financing for the F-16s, the Times said, would represent more than two-thirds of the USD 300 million that Pakistan will receive this year in American military financing for equipment and training. Last year, Congress required those funds to be used specifically for law enforcement or counter-terrorism purposes. Pakistan’s military has rarely used its current fleet of F-16s, which were built in the 1980s, for close-air support of counter-terrorism missions, largely because the risks of civilian casualties would inflame anti-government sentiments in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas, the paper said.—Agencies