The Pakistani military said Monday it was capable of fighting without American assistance, adding that it had not been informed officially of a US decision to suspend $800 million worth of aid.
“The army in the past as well as at present, has conducted successful military operations using its own resources without any external support whatsoever,” military spokesman Major General Athar Abbas wrote to AFP.
“We have not received any official intimation or correspondence on the matter,” Abbas wrote.
President Barack Obama’s chief of staff, William Daley, confirmed in a television interview on Sunday that the United States has decided to withhold almost a third of its annual $2.7 billion security assistance to Islamabad.
Abbas referred AFP to an extraordinary statement from army chief of staff General Ashfaq Kayani on June 9 recommending that US military aid be re-directed towards civilians.
The suspended aid includes about $300 million to reimburse Pakistan for some of the costs of deploying more than 100,000 soldiers along the Afghan border, according to the New York Times.
Pakistan says it has 140,000 soldiers in the northwest, more than the 99,000 American troops in Afghanistan, fighting a local Taliban insurgency.
Pakistan doesn’t need US aid to fight
