US Ambassador to the UN, Nikki Haley said that the United States would continue to withhold $255 million in assistance to Pakistan until the country became a better partner in America’s fight against terrorism.
“Pakistan has played a double game for years. They work with us at times, and they also harbor the terrorists that attack our troops in Afghanistan. That game is not acceptable to this administration,” Haley said in a news conference.
On Monday, President Donald Trump signaled his dissatisfaction with the country on Twitter. “The United States has foolishly given Pakistan more than 33 billion dollars in aid over the last 15 years, and they have given us nothing but lies and deceit, thinking of our leaders as fools,” he tweeted. “They give safe havens to the terrorists we hunt in Afghanistan, with little help. No more!”
Pakistan’s defense minister responded on Twitter saying the US has “given us nothing but invective and mistrust. They overlook cross-border safe havens of terrorists who murder Pakistanis.”
Trump has signaled his frustration with Pakistan in the fight against terror since he lashed out at the country during an August speech outlining his strategy in Afghanistan.
That month was also the first time the administration said it would withhold aid money.
Haley added on Tuesday that “the president is willing to go to great lengths to stop all funding to Pakistan as they continue to harbor and support terrorism.”
Pakistan’s Prime Minister Shahid Khaqan Abbasi chaired a National Security Committee (NSC) meeting on Tuesday, attended by the country's Foreign, Interior and Defense Ministers, along with chiefs of staff of the army, navy and air force.
In a statement following the meeting, the NSC expressed "deep disappointment" at recent US leadership comments, which it said were "completely incomprehensible as they contradicted facts manifestly struck with great insensitivity at the trust between two nations built over generations, and negated the decades of sacrifices made by the Pakistani nation".
It said there had been close interaction with the US following Trump's initial policy statements regarding South Asia, and that recent visits to Pakistan by Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and Defense Secretary James Mattis were "robust and forward-looking."
The NSC claimed that Pakistan's counter-terrorism campaign had, at great financial cost, "served as a bulwark against the possible expansion of scores of terrorist organizations currently present in Afghanistan -- a fact acknowledged by US authorities at the highest levels."
"Even more importantly, the huge sacrifices made by Pakistan, including the loss of tens of thousands of lives of Pakistani civilians and security personnel, and the pain of their families, could not be trivialized so heartlessly by pushing all of it behind a monetary value -- and that too an imagined one," the statement said.