‘Cut aid to Pakistan and Palestine’
Fury as US president threatens to slash financial assistance.
Islamabad: US President Donald Trump has threatened to cut off aid to Pakistan and Palestine.
Pakistan angrily dismissed the threats as “completely incomprehensible” on Tuesday, in the latest diplomatic row to rock the shaky alliance between Washington and Islamabad over militancy.
The “recent statements ... by the American leadership were completely incomprehensible as they contradicted facts manifestly”, read a statement issued by the prime minister’s office after a meeting of the National Security Council.
Trump’s comments “struck with great insensitivity” and “negated the decades of sacrifices made by the Pakistani nation”, it added.
The statement was the first formal comment from Pakistan since Trump lashed out on Monday, making Islamabad his inaugural Twitter target of 2018.
“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,” Trump said.
“They give safe haven to the terrorists we hunt in Afghanistan, with little help. No more!”
Pakistan, which says it has lost more than 62,000 lives and US$123bil (RM495.2bil) since 2003 in its war on extremism, disputed the US$33bil (RM132.8bil) figure in the statement.
“(T)he huge sacrifices made by Pakistan... could not be trivialised so heartlessly by pushing all of it behind a monetary value – and that too an imagined one,” it said.
Foreign minister Khawaja Asif also mocked the figure on Twitter, suggesting Trump hire a US audit firm to check it “on our expense”.
The statement came one day after US ambassador David Hale was called to the foreign ministry in Islamabad in a rare public rebuke. Neither US nor Pakistani officials have commented on what was said at the meeting.
Trump, who admitted the Middle East peace process was in difficulty, also threatened to cut aid to Palestinians worth more than US$300mil (RM1.20bil) a year, drawing a rebuke that they would not be “blackmailed”.
“We pay the Palestinians HUNDRED OF MILLIONS OF DOLLARS a year and get no appreciation or respect,” Trump tweeted.
“With the Palestinians no longer willing to talk peace, why should we make any of these massive future payments to them?”
It was not immediately clear whether Trump was threatening all of the budget, worth US$319mil (RM1.28bil) in 2016, according to US government figures.
“We will not be blackmailed,” senior Palestinian official Hanan Ashrawi said in a statement yesterday after Trump’s tweet.
“President Trump has sabotaged our search for peace, freedom and justice. Now he dares to blame the Palestinians for the consequences of his own irresponsible actions!”
The US has long provided the Palestinian Authority with much-needed budgetary support and security assistance, as well as an additional US$304mil (RM1.22bil) for the UN’s programmes in the West Bank and Gaza. — AFP
We will not be blackmailed. Hanan Ashrawi