The Trump administration is reconsidering to restore Pakistan’s security assistance on grounds that the country is ready to reconsider its willingness to provide safe haven to terrorists nearly two decades after 9/11, reported The Washington Times.
The election of Imran Khan as prime minister of Pakistan last month presents the US with a rare window to reset relations with a critical but troublesome ally, but the two sides face a slew of difficult issues and a lack of trust in an effort to improve relations.
A battle is brewing inside the Trump administration over whether to reconsider the president’s aggressive policy of withholding millions of dollars in sensitive security assistance to Pakistan on grounds that the South Asian nation is ready to reconsider its willingness to provide safe haven to terrorists nearly two decades after 9/11.
Washington has long made clear its frustration with Islamabad’s “tolerance of Taliban” and other “Islamist factions” within its borders, saying it enables an “insurgency in neighbouring Afghanistan” that Kabul and Washington have been unable to defeat.
With Pakistan last month holding a democratic transition of power for only the second time in its 71-year history, some of Trump’s top advisers argue that the time is ripe for Washington to begin restoring the military aid that the president cut from Islamabad at the start of the year.
“The Pakistanis needed to be put in their place,” one former White House adviser on Pakistan told The Washington Times, but a former US ambassador to the country countered that “the recent cutting of security funds was an absolutely terrible decision”.
