NEW YORK, June 14, Reuter: The United State has agreed to supply Airborn: Warning and Control System (AWACS) aircraft to Pakistan to defend its airspace against raids from Afghanistan, Time magazine reported today.
However, debates over the type of AWACS aircraft to be delivered and their future disposition have delayed delivery, the news magazine said.
Raids into Pakistan by Soviet built Afghan Migs often have been directed against staging areas for supplies and weapons destined for anticommunist rebels inside Afghanistan, according to Time.
Afghan air raids on Pakistani border areas beginning late last year led Pakistan to send an “extremely urgent” request for U.S. surveillance planes, to direct Pakistani F16 fighters against intruders along the country’s 1,400 miles (2,300 km) border with Afghanistan, Time said.
The United States agreed almost at once to supply the planes, but in recent weeks complications in both the United States and Pakistan have dampened hopes that the planes will be delivered any time soon, according to Time.
Pakistan initially wanted to buy three being E3A sentry aircraft, the top of the line surveillance aircraft deployed on the Nato Front, Time said.
But the U.S. Defense Department said it had no sentry planes to spare, and last month Washington offered Islamabad the much less sophisticated Mrumman E2€ Hawkeye, it said. The propeller driven Hawkeye is slower and more vulnerable to attack than the sentry, Time said.
Article extracted from this publication >> June 19, 1987
