Pakistan may study other fighter aircraft options, US told Ambassador
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| Pakistan may study other fighter aircraft options, US told Ambassador |
As per a political source, this was passed on by Finance Minister Ishaq Dar to US Ambassador David Hale at a meeting at the Foreign Office.
The meeting was held a week ago before the contention of acquiring the F-16s got to be open.
Counselor on Foreign Affairs Sartaj Aziz, PAF Chief Air Chief Marshal Sohail Aman and Special Assistant Tariq Fatemi likewise went to the meeting.
At first, the arrangement for the offer of eight F-16s to Pakistan was to be in part supported through the Foreign Military Financing (FMF) with the US giving $430 million, while the remaining $270m was to be paid by Pakistan from its national assets. In any case, after the Congressional hang on sponsoring the deal through FMF, the US organization requested that Pakistan make a pledge to purchase the planes from its own cash.
Be that as it may, the Pakistan government declined to make any promise unless the confinement on financing through FMF was lifted.
There is a discernment in some quarters that the legislature committed an error by declining to make the dedication for the buy of the contender airplane in light of the fact that doing as such would not have blocked the alternative of financing through FMF in future.
The Pakistani duty, it is accepted, would have facilitated Congressional weight on the organization, other than permitting the procedure for endorsement and assignment of the whole FMF bundle to advance. The procedure is in effect presently kept down in view of the exceptionally serious open deliberation on the financing of the F-16 bargain.
In perspective of the waiting impasse, the organization has now begun underlining on the Congress to concentrate on the bundle as opposed to getting stayed with one of its components.
The FMF cash during the current year must be affirmed and appropriated before September 30 or else the assets would remain not any more accessible.
Guide on Foreign Affairs Sartaj Aziz, in a media communication on Tuesday, said Pakistan was working with the "suppliers to see what could be elective wellsprings of financing".
Mr Aziz said that Pakistan would just purchase the F-16s on the off chance that some course of action was worked out "else we will search for some other air ship".
He, by and by, looked hopeful about the issue being determined and said: "We'll have the capacity to discover some exit plan". The message from the counselor looked exceptionally figured.
It ought to be reviewed that Senate Foreign Relations Chairman Bob Corker, whose council has locale over outside arms deals and who is keeping up the hang on the financing of the arrangement, had while voting for the offer of the planes to Pakistan in March noticed that he didn't obstruct the arrangement so that Islamabad is not driven towards Russian-or French-made planes.
Mr Corker had then said that he might want to keep up US influence over Pakistan, which he portrayed as indeterminate partner, through its proceeded with dependence on the US for upkeep of F-16s.
Notwithstanding endorsing the arrangement, Mr Corker withheld its money related part.
Among the key explanations for the Congressional hold are worries that Pakistan has not sufficiently made move against the Haqqani system; correctional facility sentence for Dr Shakeel Afridi — the doctor who had collaborated with the US in following Osama container Laden; and fears about Pakistani atomic project.
