US Secretary of State Anthony Blanken on Tuesday defended military sales to Pakistan after criticism from growing US partner India, which sees itself as a target for Islamabad’s F-16 bombers.
Blankenship met India’s foreign minister in the US capital a day after holding separate talks with his Pakistani counterpart.
The US-Pakistan alliance, born out of the Cold War, is bitter about Islamabad’s relationship with the Taliban regime in Afghanistan. A recent shift in Islamabad, however, has seen attempts at rapprochement led by Oxford-educated foreign minister Bilawal Bhutto Zardari in a charm offensive.
The top US diplomat defended the $450 million F-16 contract approved for Pakistan in early September, saying the package was meant to maintain Pakistan’s existing fleet.
“It’s not new aircraft, new systems, new weapons. It keeps what they have,” Blanken told a news conference with his Indian counterpart, Foreign Minister Subramaniam Jaishankar.
“Pakistan’s program strengthens its ability to counter terrorist threats emanating from Pakistan or the region. It is in no one’s interest to allow those threats to proceed with impunity,” Blanken said.
Jaishankar did not criticize Blanken in public. But on Sunday, addressing a reception for the Indian community in the United States, Jaishankar said of the American stance, “You are not fooling anyone.”
“For someone to say, I’m doing this because it’s for counterterrorism, when you’re talking about an aircraft like the F-16 capability, everybody knows where they’re deployed,” he said. He said referring to the fleet. Positioning against India.
“Quite frankly, it’s a relationship that has neither served Pakistan well nor served American interests well,” he said.
Pakistan’s military relies on U.S. equipment, but ties have strained during the two-decade-long U.S. war in Afghanistan. had seized power again.
India has historically bought military equipment from Moscow and has pressed the US to lift sanctions mandated under a 2017 law for any country buying “critical” military hardware from Russia.
Speaking ahead of Blankenship, Jaishankar noted that India has also made major purchases from the US, France and Israel in recent years.
India reviews the quality and terms of procurement and “we exercise a choice that we believe is in our national interest,” he said, ruling out any change due to “geopolitical tensions”.
Bridging the Ukraine gap
Since the late 1990s, the United States has made warming ties with India its primary goal, with the world’s two largest democracies finding common ground on issues related to China’s growing threat of Islamist extremism.
The US has largely turned a blind eye to India’s continued ties to Russia since the invasion of Ukraine, but cheered when Prime Minister Narendra Modi recently told President Vladimir Putin that this was “not the time for war.” Is.”
Jaishankar hinted that India was working behind the scenes, saying it had “broke” with Russia during talks led by the United Nations and Turkey that allowed grain from the blockaded Black Sea. Opened the delivery.
Jaishankar said that India is “growing its international footprint.
“There are many other regions where we will be aligned with US interests. It is to our mutual benefit that this is a complementary process,” Jaishankar said.
But once solid support for India in the US Congress saw the difference between concerns about rights under Modi, a Hindu nationalist whose government has marginalized Muslims and other religious minorities and pressured activists through legal action and financial scrutiny. Accused of putting.
Blanken tackled the issue delicately, saying both countries must “respect fundamental values, including universal human rights, such as freedom of religion and belief and freedom of expression, which underpin our democracies.”
Jaishankar indirectly replied that both nations are committed to democracy but “from their own history, tradition and social context.”
“India does not believe that the efficacy or quality of democracy should be decided by vote banks,” he said.
