The United States and Pakistan are veering toward a deepening clash, with Pakistan’s Parliament demanding a permanent halt to all drone strikes just as the most senior American envoy since the killing of Osama bin Laden is to arrive with a stern message that the country has only months to show it is truly committed to rooting out the remnants of Al Qaedaand associated groups.
The United States has increased drone strikes in Pakistan’s tribal areas in the past 10 days in an effort to exploit the uncertainty and disarray among militant ranks following Bin Laden’s death on May 2. The latest airstrikes, on Friday, came as Pakistan’s spy chief, Lt. Gen. Ahmed Shuja Pasha, in a rare appearance before Pakistan’s Parliament, denounced the American raid as a “sting operation.”
Parliament then passed a resolution declaring that the drone strikes were a violation of sovereignty equivalent to the secret attack on Bin Laden’s house in Abbottabad. The lawmakers warned that Pakistan could cut supply lines to American forces in Afghanistan if there were more such attacks. The resolution contained no condemnation of the Afghan Taliban, who killed more than 80 Pakistani paramilitary cadets the same day.
The stepping up of the condemnations of the United States came as Senator John Kerry, Democrat of Massachusetts, the chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee and a longtime emissary to Pakistan in times of crisis, was preparing to land in Islamabad. He was arriving with a list of actions — and some offers from Washington to ease tensions — that he finalized in a meeting on Thursday with President Obama’s national security adviser, Thomas E. Donilon, and other top American security officials.
A senior administration official said Saturday that the United States would try to use as leverage the threat of Congressional cuts to the $3 billion in annual American aid to Pakistan as well as any evidence of Pakistani complicity in sheltering Bin Laden that is contained in the hundreds of computer flash drives and documents recovered in the commando raid on Bin Laden’s compound. So far, no such evidence has been found.
“In the Congress, this is a make or break moment” for aid to Pakistan, Mr. Kerry said in an interview just before he left for Afghanistan and Pakistan. Mr. Kerry said he would tell Pakistan that there needed to be “a real demonstration of commitment” to fighting terrorist groups in the next few months. But he will also reassure Pakistani officials that they will be a central part of any political accord with the Taliban in Afghanistan, to ease their fears that India will take over swaths of Afghanistan as the United States pulls out.
The Obama administration has said nothing about the public criticisms of the United States by the Pakistani government, hoping they are designed to alleviate the public’s anger and the Pakistani military’s embarrassment that American forces attacked the Bin Laden house without being detected by Pakistani warning systems. Mr. Donilon and other senior administration officials declined to be interviewed about the administration’s strategy.
The American reticence stems in part from the reality that such ultimatums have been sent before — most recently after the arrest earlier this year of Raymond Davis, a Central Intelligence Agency contractor who shot two Pakistanis during what he said was a robbery. Repeatedly, Pakistan has simply called the administration’s bluff and revealed the threats as hollow. The United States relies heavily on transit routes in Pakistan to supply American troops in Afghanistan, and any move to cut off aid would probably prompt Pakistan to shut the supply routes, as it has done during previous disputes.
The Kerry visit comes at the highest moment of tensions between the two countries since Pakistan, given little choice, formally broke with the Taliban and allied with the United States just after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. Mr. Kerry said that the moment had come for both countries to make “fundamental choices” about their relationship. “I have had some of these conversations with Pakistan before,” he said, “but never in the context of the world’s No. 1 terrorist being found 35 miles from the capital, next door to Pakistan’s West Point, and with the discovery he was fully, fully operational.”
Mr. Kerry’s main piece of negotiating leverage is Pakistan’s uncertainty about what officials are finding in the trove of computer data — which Mr. Donilon has compared to “a small college library” — about Pakistani complicity hiding the Qaeda leader. American officials say they believe the top leaders of the country were genuinely surprised about Bin Laden’s whereabouts, based on their reaction to phone calls from the administration on the night of the raid and electronic surveillance of Pakistani government communications.
But the officials strongly suspect that others in the government, the military or the Inter-Services Intelligence directorate, or ISI, the main intelligence service, were aware. So far the United States has not said what kind of inquiry Pakistan should conduct to answer those questions, and given the political atmosphere surrounding Bin Laden’s killing, they question whether any such investigation would be thorough or credible.
Mr. Kerry will also raise an issue that the administration has refused to discuss publicly: Pakistan’s escalating production of nuclear fuel to expand its arsenal of 100 or so nuclear weapons. Members of Congress, in closed sessions, have complained that since the $3 billion American annual aid to the Pakistani military is fungible, the United States is effectively helping bankroll the fastest-growing nuclear arsenal in the world. “It will jeopardize funding if that continues,” Mr. Kerry said.
In fact, according to some officials, the administration is on alert for signs that Pakistan’s reaction to the Bin Laden raid could be an expansion, or repositioning, of its nuclear forces.
“The very public discussion that the raid showed the nuclear assets could be vulnerable to seizure may lead them to disperse them, or increase their number,” one United States official involved in monitoring Pakistan’s nuclear program said. “It’s a significant worry because the more they spread it around, the higher the risk something gets loose.”
The Pakistani Parliament’s resolution warned of a “strong national response” if any nation — clearly it meant the United States — sought to seize or immobilize the country’s nuclear arsenal.
On Capitol Hill last week, senior lawmakers warned that without answers to questions of possible Pakistani complicity in harboring Bin Laden, American aid could be imperiled. The House speaker, John A. Boehner, who visited Pakistan last month, told reporters on Thursday that the United States should remain engaged with Pakistan as an ally against terrorists, but that Pakistani leaders must prove their resolve to fighting terrorist groups.
“It’s time to look the Pakistanis in the eye and get a commitment that they are fully onboard with us,” Mr. Boehner said. “If we’re going to continue to provide aid and strengthen this relationship, I think we need to have a clearer understanding.”
Senator Carl Levin, a Michigan Democrat who heads the Armed Services Committee, went a step further, saying he would cut off $1.5 billion in annual nonmilitary aid unless Pakistan explained how Bin Laden could have gone undetected for years and militant groups like the Haqqani network use Pakistan as a haven for attacks into Afghanistan.
The United States has increased drone strikes in Pakistan’s tribal areas in the past 10 days in an effort to exploit the uncertainty and disarray among militant ranks following Bin Laden’s death on May 2. The latest airstrikes, on Friday, came as Pakistan’s spy chief, Lt. Gen. Ahmed Shuja Pasha, in a rare appearance before Pakistan’s Parliament, denounced the American raid as a “sting operation.”
Parliament then passed a resolution declaring that the drone strikes were a violation of sovereignty equivalent to the secret attack on Bin Laden’s house in Abbottabad. The lawmakers warned that Pakistan could cut supply lines to American forces in Afghanistan if there were more such attacks. The resolution contained no condemnation of the Afghan Taliban, who killed more than 80 Pakistani paramilitary cadets the same day.
The stepping up of the condemnations of the United States came as Senator John Kerry, Democrat of Massachusetts, the chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee and a longtime emissary to Pakistan in times of crisis, was preparing to land in Islamabad. He was arriving with a list of actions — and some offers from Washington to ease tensions — that he finalized in a meeting on Thursday with President Obama’s national security adviser, Thomas E. Donilon, and other top American security officials.
A senior administration official said Saturday that the United States would try to use as leverage the threat of Congressional cuts to the $3 billion in annual American aid to Pakistan as well as any evidence of Pakistani complicity in sheltering Bin Laden that is contained in the hundreds of computer flash drives and documents recovered in the commando raid on Bin Laden’s compound. So far, no such evidence has been found.
“In the Congress, this is a make or break moment” for aid to Pakistan, Mr. Kerry said in an interview just before he left for Afghanistan and Pakistan. Mr. Kerry said he would tell Pakistan that there needed to be “a real demonstration of commitment” to fighting terrorist groups in the next few months. But he will also reassure Pakistani officials that they will be a central part of any political accord with the Taliban in Afghanistan, to ease their fears that India will take over swaths of Afghanistan as the United States pulls out.
The Obama administration has said nothing about the public criticisms of the United States by the Pakistani government, hoping they are designed to alleviate the public’s anger and the Pakistani military’s embarrassment that American forces attacked the Bin Laden house without being detected by Pakistani warning systems. Mr. Donilon and other senior administration officials declined to be interviewed about the administration’s strategy.
The American reticence stems in part from the reality that such ultimatums have been sent before — most recently after the arrest earlier this year of Raymond Davis, a Central Intelligence Agency contractor who shot two Pakistanis during what he said was a robbery. Repeatedly, Pakistan has simply called the administration’s bluff and revealed the threats as hollow. The United States relies heavily on transit routes in Pakistan to supply American troops in Afghanistan, and any move to cut off aid would probably prompt Pakistan to shut the supply routes, as it has done during previous disputes.
The Kerry visit comes at the highest moment of tensions between the two countries since Pakistan, given little choice, formally broke with the Taliban and allied with the United States just after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. Mr. Kerry said that the moment had come for both countries to make “fundamental choices” about their relationship. “I have had some of these conversations with Pakistan before,” he said, “but never in the context of the world’s No. 1 terrorist being found 35 miles from the capital, next door to Pakistan’s West Point, and with the discovery he was fully, fully operational.”
Mr. Kerry’s main piece of negotiating leverage is Pakistan’s uncertainty about what officials are finding in the trove of computer data — which Mr. Donilon has compared to “a small college library” — about Pakistani complicity hiding the Qaeda leader. American officials say they believe the top leaders of the country were genuinely surprised about Bin Laden’s whereabouts, based on their reaction to phone calls from the administration on the night of the raid and electronic surveillance of Pakistani government communications.
But the officials strongly suspect that others in the government, the military or the Inter-Services Intelligence directorate, or ISI, the main intelligence service, were aware. So far the United States has not said what kind of inquiry Pakistan should conduct to answer those questions, and given the political atmosphere surrounding Bin Laden’s killing, they question whether any such investigation would be thorough or credible.
Mr. Kerry will also raise an issue that the administration has refused to discuss publicly: Pakistan’s escalating production of nuclear fuel to expand its arsenal of 100 or so nuclear weapons. Members of Congress, in closed sessions, have complained that since the $3 billion American annual aid to the Pakistani military is fungible, the United States is effectively helping bankroll the fastest-growing nuclear arsenal in the world. “It will jeopardize funding if that continues,” Mr. Kerry said.
In fact, according to some officials, the administration is on alert for signs that Pakistan’s reaction to the Bin Laden raid could be an expansion, or repositioning, of its nuclear forces.
“The very public discussion that the raid showed the nuclear assets could be vulnerable to seizure may lead them to disperse them, or increase their number,” one United States official involved in monitoring Pakistan’s nuclear program said. “It’s a significant worry because the more they spread it around, the higher the risk something gets loose.”
The Pakistani Parliament’s resolution warned of a “strong national response” if any nation — clearly it meant the United States — sought to seize or immobilize the country’s nuclear arsenal.
“It’s time to look the Pakistanis in the eye and get a commitment that they are fully onboard with us,” Mr. Boehner said. “If we’re going to continue to provide aid and strengthen this relationship, I think we need to have a clearer understanding.”
Senator Carl Levin, a Michigan Democrat who heads the Armed Services Committee, went a step further, saying he would cut off $1.5 billion in annual nonmilitary aid unless Pakistan explained how Bin Laden could have gone undetected for years and militant groups like the Haqqani network use Pakistan as a haven for attacks into Afghanistan.
