US-Pakistan ties on the mend, but not fixed yet (Pit Stop in DC)

Pakistan Foreign Minister Bilawal Bhutto met US Secretary of State Antony Blinken just hours before the latter hosted Jaishankar to a working dinner at his residence.

And Pakistan Prime Minister Shahbaz Sharif met US President Joe Biden at a reception the latter hosted in New York for visiting dignitaries from the member nations of the UN for the annual General Assembly meetings. The meeting was mostly a meet-and-greet that lasted no more than a few minutes, but it was infinitesimally longer than anything his predecessor Imran Khana managed with Biden; the two never met or spoke on phone and Khan capped this lack of a relationship with unfounded accusations that Biden engineered his ouster.

The US and Pakistan are mending their longstanding relationship that in its 75 years has scaled dizzying heights - the US declaring Pakistan a "Major Non-NATO Ally" and plumbed subterranean depths, when then US President Donald Trump accused Pakistan of "deceit" and "lying", and shut down all security aid.

"The new government in Pakistan created new opportunities for the two sides to explore greater cooperation. The environment had become prohibitively toxic during the end of the Imran Khan era, because of Khan's baseless accusations of a US conspiracy to oust him," said Michael Kugelman, a South Asia expert with Wilson Center, a top US think tank. "The floods--as horrible as they have been--did provide a silver lining as they provided a new spark for cooperation."

But Kugelman cautioned against leaping to conclusions. "I don't think we should overstate the new momentum in relations, as encouraging as it's been in recent weeks. The ship may have been righted but the waters are still choppy and the skies are murky. The relationship's future is still unsettled. It's unclear if there is scope for continued security cooperation, especially related to counterterrorism in Afghanistan," he said.

A former White House official who dealt with South Asia said that the two sides are indeed fixing the relationship that "is both important and longstanding". But the official noted that Indias must not read this in zero-sum terms, the improvement in US ties with Pakistan doesn't come at the cost of US ties with India.

Many in India have reacted angrily, for instance, to the massive $450 million package proposed by the Biden administration for the maintenance of Pakistan's fleet of 52 F-16s fighter jets and see in it a slap on the wrists for India for its stand on the Russian invasion of Ukraine (India continues to buy massive amounts of discounted crude from Russia, which, the west believes, helps Moscow withstand sanctions).

"The US doesn't do foreign policy like that," the official said, scoffing at those in India who believe the F-16 package has something to do with India.

India has protested - both Jaishankar and Defence Minister Rajnath Singh have publicly attacked it, although without linking it to Ukraine tensions. The Biden administration has shown no signs of a rethink on it and there is also no move to stop it yet in the US Congress, whose go ahead is needed for the proposal to go through. A move by the Obama administration in 2016 to sell eight F-16s to Pakistan at subsidised costs was killed by bipartisan opposition from both parties and in both chambers.

In another sign of a relationship on the mend is the absence of the cautionary appeal from the US from readouts of conversations and exchanges between the two sides - that Pakistan should act decisively against all terrorists and punish the Mumbai attacks masterminds who are all in Pakistan. It my have to do with the fact that Pakistan has met and fulfilled all conditions imposed by the Financial Action Task Force, a global watchdog against terror financing and money laundering.

--IANS yrj/vd

( 691 Words)

2022-10-09-20:34:01 (IANS)