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Monday, May 09, 2011
Lugar lists reasons for Pak indispensability to USWASHINGTON: Senator Richard Lugar, top Republican on the Foreign Relations Committee, has warned against any US move to distance itself from Pakistan, underscoring the South Asian nation’s critical importance to American interests in the region.
“We should not distance ourselves from a country that looms so large in our own strategic calculations. We should be clear-eyed about the limits of our relationship,” the senator said this week at a hearing. He spoke amid suggestions by some lawmakers on cutting US aid to Pakistan in the wake of eliminated al Qaeda chief Osama bin Laden’s undetected presence in Abbottabad.
Lugar, a co-architect of $7.5 billion assistance programme for Pakistan, known as Kerry-Lugar-Berman Act, acknowledged the bilateral relationship is complicated and that bin Laden’s having hidden in the Pakistani city has raised some questions.
But, he cautioned “distancing ourselves from Pakistan would be unwise and extremely dangerous”. He said any such step would weaken US intelligence gathering, “limit our ability to prevent conflict between India and Pakistan, further complicate military operations in Afghanistan, end cooperation on finding terrorists”.
He also mentioned the importance of nuclear safety. However, the senator said the US must ensure that its military and development assistance is serving American national security interests and sought suggestions from experts on improving the bilateral relationship. “Pakistan is a nuclear-armed state with missiles capable of delivering nuclear weapons. With more than 180 million people, it is one of the largest Muslim countries in the world and has five times the population of Afghanistan”.
He said it has a close working relationship with China, has been in conflict with India, with whom the United States has close relations. Pakistan is a neighbour of Iran, a state with nuclear ambitions, he added.
“What happens along the Afghan-Pakistan border deeply affects the fate of our operations in Afghanistan. In short, Pakistan is a strategically vital country with which we must engage for our own national security.”
Lugar said it was in acknowledgement of this fact that Congress supported, on a bipartisan basis, the Enhanced Partnership with Pakistan Act, signed into law in 2009.
He remarked that the legislation sponsored by Chairman Kerry and himself, attempts to “expand US-Pakistani ties beyond military matters and signals our country’s willingness to engage with Pakistan over the long term”.
The United States has made some progress and Pakistan has acknowledged the fact that Osama bin Laden has been taken out.
He also cited John Brennan, President Obama’s counter-terrorism adviser, who said this week, “Pakistan has been responsible for capturing and killing more terrorists inside of Pakistan than any country.” app
Courtesy www.dailytimes.com.pk