but before jumping too high, read the last two paragraphs.
DAWN.COM | World | US House drops A.Q. Khan, India from aid bill
----------------------------------------------------------------
WASHINGTON: The US House of Representatives has dropped an explicit demand for access to Dr A.Q. Khan and another for preventing terrorist attacks against India as conditions in a legislation that triples US aid to Pakistan.
In Washington’s diplomatic circles, the gesture is seen as a major concession from a house that has placed other severe conditions in the aid to Pakistan act approved on Thursday.
In April, when the two conditions were first reported in the media, Pakistan took a strong stance and said it felt ‘humiliated’ by the language of the bill implicating the country in nuclear proliferation and cross-border terrorism.
Pakistan was particularly sensitive about the clause that required it to improve relations with India as a pre-condition for US assistance, pointing out that it amounted to micromanaging a sovereign nation’s foreign policy.
The Obama administration backed Islamabad on this issue and succeeded in removing the two conditions from the bill.
But pro-Indian lawmakers tried to revive the conditions on Thursday when the House finally approved the legislation. Congressman Gary Ackerman — one of the most outspoken supporters of India in the US Congress — tried also to restrict Pakistan from using the US aid to buy jets and other weapons to confront India.
The House Foreign Affairs Committee, however, had already reworked the language to say that Islamabad would have to provide ‘access to Pakistani nationals’ connected to proliferation networks and omitted the part that named Dr Khan.
The reworked bill also required Pakistan to ‘cease support, including by any elements within the Pakistan military or its intelligence agency, to extremist and terrorist groups’ and ‘preventing cross-border attacks into neighbouring countries’ as a condition for US security assistance.
The omission of Dr Khan and India from the bill does save the Pakistani government from total humiliation but the bill passed by the house would still hold Pakistan accountable on these two specific demands.
At the end of the day it is pretty simple.