Daily Times

Before leaving for the high-level visit to Pakistan, United States Secretary of State Mike Pompeo told journalists here that the purpose of the visit was to ‘reset’ relations between the two countries.

Acknowledging the previously fraught relationship between the two countries, Pompeo said,”We’re hopeful that with the new leadership we can find common ground and begin to work on some of our shared problems together.”.

The last time Pakistan and the US ‘reset’ the relationship was in 2012, following two significant events in 2011 — the US raid in Abbottabad that killed Osama bin Laden and the Nov 24 US air attack that killed 22 Pakistani soldiers in Salala.

Pompeo highlighted to the media that during his previous role as the Central Intelligence Agency director he had worked closely with Pakistani authorities and had met Foreign Minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi and army chief General Qamar Javed Bajwa ‘a number of times’.

In a nod to building on the professional relationships already established, he said: “We’ll have three opportunities to walk through the complexity that is this relationship and hopefully begin to make some progress so that we can get back to a set of common understandings.”

US Marine General Joseph Dunford, who accompanied Pompeo in his meetings ahead of the talks, stressed that Pakistan would be reminded about the clear expectations set out in US president Donald Trump’s South Asia strategy, especially Pakistan’s help to influence the Taliban to participate in peace negotiations with Afghanistan.

The meeting between the two countries came against a backdrop of new tensions last week when the Pentagon confirmed the cancellation of $300 million in coalition support funds (CSF) to Pakistan; however, Pompeo insisted this latest US move was not a surprise to Pakistan.”This wasn’t news to the Pakistanis. It made a lot of headlines over the last few days, but they [Pakistani authorities] were told this past summer that they weren’t likely to get that money.” He explained the reasoning behind the cancellation by saying, “We haven’t seen the progress that we need to see from them.”

Since 2017, the US has withheld $800 million in overall assistance to Pakistan.

Pompeo continued that the objective of the trip was to ‘try and articulate what it is our expectation, the things that they can do, the things that they expect us to do, and see if we can’t find a path forward together’.

Pompeo emphasised to the journalists that the US hoped to start a new relationship with Pakistan’s new government. Referring to Trump administration’s new strategy, he said it was formulated ‘long before the prime minister [Imran Khan] was in power, and I’m hoping we can turn the page and begin to make progress’.

Pompeo continued further, “We need Pakistan to seriously engage to help us get to the reconciliation we need in Afghanistan.”

Pompeo stressed that should the U.S. see Pakistan cooperating on the expectations outlined, overall assistance to Pakistan will be reconsidered.

Over the last decade,Washington has repeatedly accused Islamabad of harbouring the Afghan Taliban who attack US forces in Afghanistan. Pakistan has strenuously denied the allegations.

Published in Daily Times, September 6^th 2018.