Senator Richard Lugar, the 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 of cutting US aid to Pakistan in the wake of slain al Qaeda chief Osama bin Laden’s undetected presence in Abbottabad.
Lugar, a co-architect of the $7.5 billion assistance programme for Pakistan known as the Kerry-Lugar-Berman Act, acknowledged that the bilateral relationship was complicated and that bin Laden having hidden in the Pakistani city had raised some questions, but he cautioned that “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, and end cooperation in finding terrorists.” He also pointed out the importance of nuclear safety. However, the senator said the US must ensure that its military and development assistance was 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,” said Lugar. “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,” he added.
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 John Kerry and himself attempted to “expand US-Pakistani ties beyond military matters and signals our country’s willingness to engage with Pakistan over the long term.”
“Our diplomatic, security and development ties are growing, despite many difficulties,” said Lugar.
