PPP's ex-envoy to US, Indian lobbies working against F-16 deal: DM Khwj Asif

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PPP’s ex-envoy to US, Indian lobbies working against F-16 deal: defence minister

               ISLAMABAD: Defence Minister Khawaja Asif during a  National Assembly briefing on Tuesday said that a deal with the United  States for the procurement of eight F-16 fighter jets is facing delays  due to "some lobbyists working against us there".

He said an Indian lobby, as well as Pakistan’s former ambassador to the US are “working against us” and had approached the US House of Representatives to lobby against the sale.
Read: F-16 sale delayed in US Congress
“Some lobbyists there are working against us. They have approached the House of Representatives. The Indian lobby is there too and the former envoy to the US from the PPP government is also working against us, saying that these F-16s should not be given to us.”
Asif said that despite lobbies efforts, “as of today, the US is committed to providing us eight F-16 fighter jets”, adding that the jets which were instrumental during Operation Zarb-i-Azb were to be used for anti-terrorist activities alongside the JF-17 Thunder.
Read: Pakistan in talks with US to procure latest F-16 jets: Air chief
The jets have a two-year lead time, he said, which means “if we start a contract today, they will give it in two years”.
‘No military alliance per se’ Talking about Pakistan’s participation in the 34-state Islamic military coalition formed by Saudi Arabia to combat terrorism the defence minister said, “We don’t have a military alliance with Saudi per se.”
He added that the scope and participation of members in the 34-country coalition, although still undetermined, is being evolved.
Also read: Role in anti-terror coalition discussed with Saudi Arabia
The 34-state military coalition to combat terrorism was announced by the kingdom in December. Member countries, including Pakistan, seemed surprised at their inclusion in the alliance as they had not been consulted before being named as members of the coalition.
Despite confirmation by the government of participation in the alliance, the scope of Pakistan’s participation in coalition has remained ambiguous since the initial announcement was made.
“Diplomatic, media and counter-narrative aspects are being discussed right now,” Asif told the House. “We discussed all things with them, but the matter is still evolving.”
“Consultations are ongoing,” the defence minister said, cautioning it would be premature to form an opinion on the coalition at this point. He assured lawmakers they would be taken into confidence when there is a development.
On mediation between Saudi Arabia and Iran in the face of escalating tensions in the Middle East, he said the meeting between Islamabad and Riyadh was “encouraging”.
“The response was very good and with that spirit they are going to Iran,” he said.
‘Most defence cooperation with Kingdom of Saudi Arabia’ The defence minister also briefed the House on Pakistan’s relationship with Saudi Arabia a day after the prime minister and Chief of Army Staff paid a visit to the kingdom to reportedly discuss the 34-country military coalition instead of touching on Saudi-Iran mediation as officials had earlier claimed they would.
“Compared to all the countries in the world, we have the most defence cooperation with Saudi Arabia. On average, we have five exercises a year with them,” Asif said.
He listed five different agreements for defence cooperation with the kingdom:

  • 1980 and 1982: Deals with deportationists for training
  • 2005: Defence cooperation training, defence production, medical training, supply of weapons and defence equipment
  • 2007: Defence training and counter-terrorism training
  • 2012: National Defence University and Naif University agreement for training

He said 1,125 officers and other ranking paresonnel are in Saudi for various purposes, and that this number is increasing. “Their capacity and role over there is training and instruction… Cooperation between Saudi and Pakistan in the Ministry of Defence Production is being multiplied.”

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Re: PPP's ex-envoy to US, Indian lobbies working against F-16 deal: DM Khwj Asif

Why is that all sorts of traitors end up in PPP? This ambassador called pakistanis carpet sellers before and is always working against Pakistan.

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Re: PPP’s ex-envoy to US, Indian lobbies working against F-16 deal: DM Khwj Asif

Just a lie
Haqqani declared this just blame
[https://pbs.twimg.com/profile_images/1073230260/geo-news-twitter-001_bigger.jpg

Geo News Urdu ‏[COLOR=#B1BBC3]@geonews_urdu](https://twitter.com/geonews_urdu) 3h3 hours ago
[RIGHT]الزام لگانے کے بجائے صاحبانِ اقتدار خارجہ پالیسی ٹھیک کریں،حسین حقانی

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CZGIv9WU8AAK0Z6.png

[/RIGHT]

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CZGIwTuUsAIXJfp.png

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Re: PPP's ex-envoy to US, Indian lobbies working against F-16 deal: DM Khwj Asif

He was not a traitor , Just a blame game of memo gate
Gen Pasha who was later found a traitor for abating in US attack on Abbotabad along with Kiani apologized for that from AAZ after retirement .

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Re: PPP's ex-envoy to US, Indian lobbies working against F-16 deal: DM Khwj Asif

All his anti-Pakistani articles and lectures in the US can't just be lies, can they?

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Re: PPP's ex-envoy to US, Indian lobbies working against F-16 deal: DM Khwj Asif

I have seen his tweets a few weeks ago that us should not give f-16's to Pakistan as they'll use them against their own people (balochistan) instead of taliban. We know that he is quite influential amongst us policy makers.

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Re: PPP’s ex-envoy to US, Indian lobbies working against F-16 deal: DM Khwj Asif

This article is more than a month old, and published in some Indian newspaper.

US aid to Pakistan will be used against India: Husain Haqqani - The Economic Times

“The Obama administration’s consideration of a nuclear deal with Pakistan, just like its decision a few months ago to sell almost USD 1 billion in US-made attack helicopters, missiles and other equipment to Pakistan will fuel conflict in South Asia without fulfilling the objective of helping the country fight Islamist extremists or limit its nuclear arsenal,” said Husain Haqqani, the former Pakistani Ambassador to the US.

In a prepared remark submitted ahead of a Congressional hearing on ‘Civil Nuclear Cooperation with Pakistan: Prospects and Consequences to the Terrorism, Nonproliferation, and Trade Subcommittee of the Committee on Foreign Affairs’, Haqqani said Pakistan’s failure to tackle its jihadist challenge is not the result of a lack of arms but reflects an absence of will.

“Unless Pakistan changes its worldview and its compulsive competition with its much larger neighbour even in violation of international commitments, American weapons will end up being used to fight or menace India and perceived domestic enemies instead of being deployed against jihadists,” he said.

Read more at:
US aid to Pakistan will be used against India: Husain Haqqani - The Economic Times

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Re: PPP’s ex-envoy to US, Indian lobbies working against F-16 deal: DM Khwj Asif

Not said by Haqqani Quoting other one

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Re: PPP’s ex-envoy to US, Indian lobbies working against F-16 deal: DM Khwj Asif

Do you see anything beyond conspiracy against PPP? Here he is arguing that US should not be sending any weapons to Pakistan b/c it will be used against India.

By Husain Haqqani

Why Are We Sending This Attack Helicopter to Pakistan? - WSJ

The Obama administration’s decision this month to sell almost $1 billion in U.S.-made attack helicopters, missiles and other equipment to Pakistan will fuel conflict in South Asia without fulfilling the objective of helping the country fight Islamist extremists. Pakistan’s failure to tackle its jihadist challenge is not the result of a lack of arms but reflects an absence of will. Unless Pakistan changes its worldview, American weapons will end up being used to fight or menace India and perceived domestic enemies instead of being deployed against jihadists.

Competition with India remains the overriding consideration in Pakistan’s foreign and domestic policies. By aiding Pakistan over the years—some $40 billion since 1950, according to the Congressional Research Service—the U.S. has fed Pakistan’s delusion of being India’s regional military equal. Seeking security against a much larger neighbor is a rational objective but seeking parity with it on a constant basis is not.

Instead of selling more military equipment to Pakistan, U.S. officials should convince Pakistan that its ambitions of rivaling India are akin to Belgium trying to rival France or Germany. India’s population is six times as large as Pakistan’s while India’s economy is 10 times bigger, and India’s $2 trillion economy has managed consistent growth whereas Pakistan’s $245 billion economy has grown sporadically and is undermined by jihadist terrorism and domestic political chaos. Pakistan also continues to depend on Islamist ideology—through its school curricula, propaganda and Islamic legislation—to maintain internal nationalist cohesion, which inevitably encourages extremism and religious intolerance.

Clearly, with the latest military package, the Obama administration expects to continue the same policies adopted by several of its predecessors—and somehow get different results. It’s a mystery why the president suddenly trusts Pakistan’s military—after mistrusting it at the time of the Navy SEAL operation in May 2011 that found and killed Osama bin Laden living safely until then in the Pakistani garrison town of Abbottabad.

One explanation is that selling helicopters and missiles is easier than thinking of alternative strategies to compel an errant ally to change its behavior. This is a pattern in U.S.-Pakistan relations going back to the 1950s. Between 1950 and 1969, the U.S. gave $4.5 billion in aid to Pakistan partly in the hope of using Pakistani troops in anticommunist wars, according to declassified U.S. government documents. Pakistan did not contribute a single soldier for the wars in Korea or Vietnam but went to war with India over the disputed border state of Kashmir instead in 1965.

During the 1980s, Pakistan served as the staging ground for the jihad against the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan and received another $4.5 billion in aid, as reported by the Reagan and George H.W. Bush administrations to Congress. Pakistan diverted U.S. assistance again toward its obsessive rivalry with India, and trained insurgents to fight in the Indian part of Kashmir as well as in India’s Punjab state. It also violated promises to the U.S. and its own public statements not to acquire nuclear weapons, which it first tested openly in 1998—arguing that it could not afford to remain nonnuclear while India’s nuclear program surged ahead.

Since the 1990s, Pakistan has supported various jihadist groups, including the Afghan Taliban. After 9/11, the country’s military dictator, Gen. Pervez Musharraf, promised to end support for the Islamic radicals. Based on that promise, Pakistan received $15.1 billion in civil and military aid from the U.S. until 2009. In February, Gen. Musharraf admitted in an interview with the U.K.’s Guardian newspaper that he continued to support the Afghan Taliban even after 9/11 because of concerns over close relations between Afghanistan and India. Thus the U.S. was effectively arming a country that was, in turn, arming insurgents fighting and killing American troops in Afghanistan.

After the Dec. 16, 2014, attack on a Peshawar school, where the Taliban massacred 160 people, including many schoolchildren, Pakistan claimed it had changed its policy toward terrorist groups and would no longer distinguish between “good” and “bad” Taliban. The Pakistani military has since sped up military action against terrorist groups responsible for mayhem inside Pakistan. But the destruction, demobilization, disarmament or dismantling of Afghan Taliban and other radical groups is clearly not on the Pakistani state’s agenda. There has been no move against Kashmir-oriented jihadist groups.

Given Pakistan’s history, it is likely that the 15 AH-1Z Viper helicopters and 1,000 Hellfire missiles—as well as communications and training equipment being offered to it—will be used against secular insurgents in southwest Baluchistan province, bordering Iran, and along the disputed border in Kashmir rather than against the jihadists in the northwest bordering Afghanistan.

If the Obama administration believes Pakistan’s military has really changed its priorities, it should consider leasing helicopters to Pakistan and verify where they are deployed before going through with outright sales.

With nuclear weapons, Pakistan no longer has any reason to feel insecure about being overrun by a larger Indian conventional force. For the U.S. to continue supplying a Pakistani military that is much larger than the country can afford will only invigorate Pakistani militancy and militarism at the expense of its 200 million people, one-third of whom continue to live at less than a dollar a day per household.

Mr. Haqqani, the director for South and Central Asia at the Hudson Institute in Washington, D.C., was Pakistan’s ambassador to the U.S., 2008-11.

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Re: PPP’s ex-envoy to US, Indian lobbies working against F-16 deal: DM Khwj Asif

Jyalals would defend their leaders every possible way, even if it is against Pakistan.

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Re: PPP's ex-envoy to US, Indian lobbies working against F-16 deal: DM Khwj Asif

As usual brainless Pakis jump to conclusions. Read what you have posted. This third class peace of crape journalism what Pakis are used to exploit opponents.

[quote]
He said an Indian lobby, as well as Pakistan's former ambassador to the US are "working against us" and had approached the US House of Representatives to lobby against the sale.
[/quote]

He was government official in former PPP government. Before that he was beloved of PML(N). Get a life man.

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Re: PPP’s ex-envoy to US, Indian lobbies working against F-16 deal: DM Khwj Asif

What about benazir’s letter to Peter Galbraith to ask india to “apply pressure” on pakistan’s border in 1989 around Aslam Beg’s time?

Isn’t asking india to attack Pakistan very traitorous? I am ‘forgiving’ the part where she was lobbying for Pakistan to not get F-16s etc from the US, though we know Pakistan lost $$$ due to sanctions that froze the f16s sale.

PPP says it is fake but it was ironic on how the Chand dude in that program clip in post 10](http://www.paklinks.com/gs/usertag.php?do=list&action=hash&hash=10) said that even if it was true, then she had a reason to say it. That is truly disgusting.

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Re: PPP’s ex-envoy to US, Indian lobbies working against F-16 deal: DM Khwj Asif

Quoting fake is a usual drama against PPP by estab & Takht e Lahore forces like memo gate
These people can go to every extend for power & money

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Re: PPP's ex-envoy to US, Indian lobbies working against F-16 deal: DM Khwj Asif

What about the Chand guy even defending the fake that had very damaging info like asking india to attack pakistan?

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Re: PPP's ex-envoy to US, Indian lobbies working against F-16 deal: DM Khwj Asif

Yes that rat's blue ticked twitter account must be getting run by establishment where he spews venom against Pakistan and supports India.

What about all those tweets where he openly says US shouldn't sell F16 to Pakistan as they will be used on India?

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Re: PPP’s ex-envoy to US, Indian lobbies working against F-16 deal: DM Khwj Asif

Everything that goes against PPP is fake, propaganda, false, lies… otherwise PPP has made Sindh a great shining example for future generations, Sindh will be considered the most advanced in time in every aspect of life, the development work, the infra-structure, the resource management, the number of hospitals, number of educational institutions surpasses everything combined in entire Europe and US :k: