WASHINGTON: In small consolation for Pakistan, the Senate Foreign Relations Committee provided for a waiver of the storage costs that Islamabad has been paying for 28 mothballed F16 fighter planes.
In an amendment to the foreign aid bill that was approved and sent to the Senate floor, the panel included a provision that would allow President Clinton to use his discretion to “release the government of Pakistan of its contractual obligation to pay the United States government for the storage costs of items purchased prior to Oct. 1, 1990,” but not delivered to Pakistan because the Presser amendment had kicked in Last week’s measure, by Sen, Hank Brown, Republican of Colorado, also gave the President the prerogative to “reimburse the Government of Pakistan for any such amounts paid, on such terms and conditions as the President may prescribe, provided that such payments have no budgetary I impact.”
On Oct. 1, 1990, President George Bush was unable to make the annual certification required under the Pressler amendment that Pakistan did not possess a nuclear device, The amendment conditioned military and economic aid to Islamabad, Since then the 28 F16sand other military equipment that Pakistan has paid nearly $1.4 billion for have been under embargo.
But in what a Pakistani diplomat described.as adding “insult to injury,” Islamabad has also been paying storage costs of $50,000 a year per plane. Several legislators agreed with Brown, who is chairman of the Foreign Relations Subcommittee on Near Eastern and South Asian Affairs, that a levying storage cost on Pakistan for the F16s was unfair, and the provision to waive these costs received unanimous approval.
Article extracted from this publication >> June 30, 1995
