PAKISTAN FIRES BACK AFTER TRUMP ACCUSES IT OF ‘LIES AND DECEIT’

• Pakistan’s defence minister responded angrily Monday to an early morning tweet by President Donald Trump that accused America’s once-close ally of “lies & deceit,” countering the United States had given Pakistan “invective and mistrust” in return.

In his first tweet of the new year, Trump said the United States had “foolishly” given Pakistan $33 billion in aid over the past 15 years “and they have given us nothing but lies & deceit, thinking of our leaders as fools.”

Trump wrote further: “They give safe haven to the terrorists we hunt in Afghanistan, with little help. No more!”

Defence Minister Khurram Dastgir-Khan hit back on Twitter, writing Pakistan, as an “anti-terror ally” of the U.S., had given Washington land and air communication, military bases and intelligence co-operation that “decimated al-Qaida over the last 16yrs,” while America “has given us nothing but invective and mistrust.”

Officials in the country’s capital scrambled to arrange a cabinet meeting to be held Tuesday to adopt a response to the Twitter attack, while Foreign Minister Khawaja Muhammad Asif said in an interview on Geo television the country is ready to publicly provide an accounting of “every detail” of U.S. aid it has received.

Pakistan was already doing all it could to combat terrorism within its borders, he said.

“We have already told the U.S. that we will not do more, so Trump’s ‘no more’ does not hold any importance,” Asif said.

The tense exchanges followed days of speculation the Trump administration — dissatisfied with the way Pakistan has dealt with the Taliban-affiliated Haqqani network and other terrorist groups — was set to dramatically reduce aid to the South Asian nation, long a key partner in the region.

Michael Kugelman, deputy director for the Asia Program at the Woodrow Wilson Center in Washington, said Trump may have been telegraphing an upcoming decision to reduce aid to the country.

“The Trump administration has been keen to take a harder line on Pakistan, but up to this point it hasn’t been clear if the White House would follow through on the threats. This tweet suggests some type of change could be afoot,” Kugelman said.

However, Kugelman added, “We shouldn’t overstate the policy significance of this tweet.”

According to a November report from the Congressional Research Service, the United States has appropriated $34 billion in direct aid and military reimbursements for Pakistan since 2002 with proposed security and economic assistance at $345 million for this fiscal year. That number is a significant decrease from the $526 million allotted in fiscal 2017.