Foreign Minister Khurram Dastgir Khan on Thursday said that Pakistan is reassessing strained ties with the United States, a move that could lead to halting supply lines into Afghanistan where American troops are fighting insurgents to stabilize the war-ravaged country with the help of NATO allies.
He made the remarks while talking to a private news outlet a day before Financial Action Task Force (FATF) is to place Pakistan on a terrorism-financing watch list at the urging of US President Donald Trump’s administration, a move likely to fuel Pakistan’s economic troubles.
The Paris-based FATF decided in February to include Pakistan in its so-called “grey list” of nations that are not doing enough to curb terrorism financing.
The US-led punitive move was part of Trump’s South Asia strategy he announced in August to pressure Pakistan to cut alleged ties to the Taliban and other terrorist groups waging deadly attacks on American forces in Afghanistan.
Pakistan denies charges it supports any terrorist groups and rejects “U.S. pressure tactics” as an attempt to blame Pakistan for international failures to end the Afghan conflict.
Bilateral relations have deteriorated to a point where no high-level interaction is happening these days between the two long time allies, the minister said.
“We have reached an impasse in which we have this very strictly formal diplomatic communication is happening, so the U.S. ambassador in Islamabad comes and speaks to us in the Foreign Office and our ambassador in Washington goes and speaks to the State Department. But that’s not really communication, the two countries are not speaking to each other,” Khan said
Communication issues
He blamed the Trump administration’s “adamant” refusal to communicate for “the low ebb” in mutual ties.
“At the moment Pakistan is not being heard. Pakistan is just being vilified and castigated in Washington without being heard at all. It is this situation.”
The only communication that currently exists apart from the formal diplomatic interaction, Khan said, is that U.S. CENTCOM commander General John Votel has been speaking to Pakistan’s army chief, General Qamar Javed Bajwa.
“Formally Pakistan is still a major non-NATO ally and for the United States to actively target Pakistan in FATF, trampling over all regulations and precedents is by necessity forcing us to rethink,” lamented the Minister.
Pakistan is required under an agreement with FATF reached in February to work on an action plan to get itself removed from the gray list, otherwise the county faces the danger of being moved to the so-called “black list” of nations.
Pakistan’s crisis-marred relationship suffered a serious blow on May 11 when Washington barred Pakistani diplomats in the United States from traveling beyond 40-kilometer radius from their posts without permission.
Islamabad responded by imposing a similar “permission regime” on American diplomats in the country. It also went a step further and withdrew a set of unilateral concessions Pakistani had granted Washington as a partner in “the war on terrorism” to ensure security cover for U.S. diplomats and officials in the country.