Virendra Pandit
New Delhi: It was expected. Only it came four days later.
Days after US President Joe Biden dubbed Pakistan as “one of the most dangerous countries in the world” as it has “nuclear weapons without any cohesion”, Washington washed it all up, yet again.
The US has always viewed a secure and prosperous Pakistan as critical to US interests, State Department’s Principal Deputy Spokesperson Vedant Patel said on Monday in what they viewed as a mid-stream course correction.
President Biden’s remarks, made at a Democratic Party congressional campaign committee reception on Thursday last week, ahead of key elections to the House of Representatives, invited a rebuke in Islamabad where Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif rejected the comments as “factually incorrect and misleading.”
For the records, Islamabad also summoned the US Ambassador to lodge an official ‘demarche’ even as it readied to receive a fresh round of funds and arms from America, which has already started lining Pakistani pockets.
This week, with renewed US support, Pakistan may also get off the hook, after four consecutive years, from the grey list of the Financial Action Task Force (FATF), the global, inter-governmental watchdog to keep track of laundering and re-navigation of terror funds.
Once Islamabad is out of this list, it will start getting funds from global organizations like the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank to rescue its sinking economy.
The US can then quickly deploy Pakistan, also, against Russia—and possibly China—as India has refused to toe the West’s line on Ukraine. Even Afghanistan, whose assets worth USD 10 billion the US ‘confiscated’ in 2021, has refused the American overtures.
“(The US is) confident of Pakistan’s commitment and ability to secure its nuclear assets,” Patel told reporters at a news conference. ” More broadly, the US values our long-standing cooperation with Pakistan. We enjoy a strong partnership,” he said.
However, the State Department refrained from commenting on Joe Biden’s remarks. “The foreign minister (of Pakistan) was in town and had a bilateral meeting with the Secretary of State not too long ago. Counselor Derek Chollet had the opportunity to visit Karachi and Islamabad not too long ago, I think, on the tail end of the summer, as did USAID Administrator Sam Power,” Patel said.
“This is a relationship we view as important, and it’s something that we’re going to continue to remain deeply engaged in. And as it relates to the ambassador, we regularly meet with officials at the foreign ministry, but I don’t have anything specific to read out,” he said.
A previously warm relationship between the US and Pakistan frayed because of Islamabad’s support for the Taliban in Afghanistan and large numbers of Jihadi militants on its soil. Americans have been particularly upset with Pakistan since 2011 after Al Qaeda founder Osama bin Laden was found and killed there.
But all that is forgotten now as America re-embraces its ex!
After a hiatus of a few years, Pakistan and the US have started to re-engage.