Downgrading ties only to hurt US interest: PM

ISLAMABAD: Prime Minister Shahid Khaqan Abbasi has warned that the US risks fueling terrorism in the region and undermining military efforts in Afghanistan if the Trump administration follows through with a threat to downgrade its relationship with Pakistan.

Just days after the Financial Times revealed that the US was considering stripping Pakistan of its status as an ally because of a perceived failure to tackle terrorism, Shahid Khaqan Abbasi said the hardline approach risked backfiring.

In an interview with the  Financial Times on Saturday he also threatened to drop the US as supplier of military aircraft to apply pressure on its ally. Pakistan currently buys F-16 fighter jets, which are made by American company Lockheed Martin and have become the mainstay of the Pakistan Air Force.

“We would like to buy more F16s, but we do have other options,” said Abbasi. “We have a long relationship with both the French and the Chinese, and we have been developing the JF-17 alongside the Chinese, which in many ways meets or even exceeds the specifications of the F 16s.”

Speaking as he prepared to fly to New York to attend the UN General Assembly, Abbasi said he found Washington’s Pakistan policy “confusing”, adding that he had to rely on media reports to find out what President Donald Trump’s plans were for the region.  “The signals we get from Washington are confusing, but our message is very clear: we are committed to fighting terror and we will continue to fight terror,” Mr Abbasi said. “All it will do [if theUS downgrades Pakistan as an ally] is degrade our efforts to fight terror, and I am not sure if that will work for the US.”

Just three weeks after Abbasi took over, Trump announced a reversal in the US approach to Afghanistan. Instead of continuing the gradual drawdown of troops started under former president Barack Obama, Trump said he would maintain, if not increase troop levels. During that speech, he also criticised Pakistan, accusing it of not doing enough to tackle cross-border terrorism emanating from its own soil. Since then, many in the region have been trying to work out what the new US policy means in practice. 

Abbasi told the  Financial Times he thought the number of American troops was likely to increase from 8,400 today to 12,000-13,000. But he admitted he found it hard to get clear information from the Trump administration: “We mostly find these things out by reading them in the newspapers.”

Pakistan insists it is doing all it can to eliminate terror groups such as the Taliban and the Haqqani Network, which operate around the border with Afghanistan. But Abbasi also admitted the limitations of its operations, saying the terrorists who killed more than 90 people in the attack in Kabul in May were likely to have come from Pakistan. “I don’t know all the details, but it seems three or four people crossed over the border. There was a vehicle which travelled from that area to Kabul and was parked in an embassy compound before it blew up,” he said.

“We have 250,000 troops fighting there, but we don’t have control of the full area. [Militants] often cross the border from the other side and attack our people. If the Afghan army cannot control them, and US forces cannot control them, what are we supposed to do?”