Pakistan attacks U.S. move

ISLAMABAD» Pakistani officials denounced the Trump administration’s decision to suspend military aid Friday, decrying what they called “arbitrary deadlines” and “unilateral pronouncements,” while members of the opposition called for retaliation.

In one of the harshest actions in years between the troubled allies, the Trump administration moved Thursday to block an estimated $1 billion in military assistance at the end of a week that began with the president accusing the Pakistanis of years of “lies & deceit.”

State Department officials said they are holding back the aid as an incentive for Pakistan to take “decisive action” to rid its lands of terrorist safe havens. It also placed the country on a watch list of nations failing to protect religious freedom.

“Working toward enduring peace requires mutual respect and trust along with patience and persistence,” Pakistan’s Foreign Ministry said in a statement. “Arbitrary deadlines, unilateral pronouncements and shifting goalposts are counterproductive in addressing common threats.”

In an interview Thursday with the Geo News channel, Foreign Minister Khawaja Muhammad Asif said that the United States was now neither a friend nor ally, but “a friend who always betrays.”

Pakistan’s opposition, meanwhile, called for concrete actions to retaliate.

Opposition leader Imran Khan said Pakistan should “delink” itself from the United States after its humiliation “by an ungrateful Donald Trump.” Khan has called for Pakistan to expel some U.S. diplomatic personnel and cut off supply routes for the U.S.-led coalition forces from the city of Karachi to Afghanistan, as well as close its airspace to U.S. forces.