ISLAMABAD: Pakistan has responded with silence on the reports from Washington that the Clinton administration would like the U.S. Congress to scrap the Pressler Amendment.
The Prime Minister, Benazir Bhutto, who med the editors of Pakistan’s national newspapers and news agencies on Nov.25 did not refer to the Uturn by the U.S. State Department’s drive in creating of a system of nuclear nonproliferation in South Asia.
Ms.Bhutto addressed the media persons soon after a leading Pakistani newspaper had published a Westem agency report from Washington that the US Government “is seeking to lift the sanctions imposed by the Congress, through the Pressler Amendment, against Pakistan.”
A senior editor of this newspaper, when contacted confirmed that the Prime Minister did not speak about this reported tum of events.
For several weeks, the Prime Minister herself has been urging the U.S. State Department to free Pakistan from what Islamabad sees as the shackles of the Pressler Amendment.
In this context, other sources show that Ms.Bhutto’s remarks highlighted her continuing sense of urgency to persuade the U.S. to roll back the Pressler Amendment and to stop pressing Pakistan to curb its nuclear program in the present circumstances.
Ms.Bhutto is believed to have said the U.S. must review the application of this Pakistan specific Amendment if Washington really wishes to promote nuclear nonproliferation in South Asia. While Pakistan, according to her, has been wrongly brought under the Pressler law’s punitive provisions, India has been spared despite its negativist attitude towards the issue of nuclear nonproliferation. The Prime Minister repeatedly affirmed that Pakistan’s nuclear program was entirely peaceful and there was no question of reversing this trend. She also expressed herself against politicizing this issue within Pakistan.
Till nightfall on Thursday, the Prime Minister’s observations, without any direct reference to the latest reports from Washington, were not updated either by the Prime Minister’s Secretariat or by the Foreign Office.
Despite the reluctance of Pakistani officials to make a quick and formal comment on the Washington report, the issues raised by the USS. Assistant Secretary of State, Ms.Robin Raphel, during her recent visit to Islamabad will once again come into sharp focus on the diplomatic front here.
The reference in the Washington report to the talks that Ms.Raphel had with Ms.Bhutto may mean that the latest U.S. move is a direct sequel to the Benazir Raphel talks here.
However. The media briefing by a U.S. spokesperson on the details of this dialogue left none in doubt on the U.S.’s steadfast intention to apply in Pressler Amendment to Pakistan in the present circumstances.
It was clear during the briefing that Ms.Raphel had told her Pakistani interlocutors to remember that the “Pressler (Amendment) is being implemented. We are stuck in a legal bind which provides no flexibility as it currently is.”
If this was no music to Pakistani cars, a follow-up observation implied that Islamabad might as well learn to live without U.S. military and economic aid under the punitive provisions of the Pressler Amendment.
The operative part of Ms, Raphel’s message to the Pakistani authorities was summed up as follows: In order to get the U.S. Congress, which feels very strongly and correctly so about nonproliferation, and the administration to consider trying to change that law, you have to have a major nonproliferation achievement in sight. And thus far, we haven’t been able to figure out how that might be.
The question which Washington may now have to answer is whether the reported move to ask the Congress to repeal the Pressler Amendment follows any major nonproliferation achievement and if so, whether this achievement relates to an unspecified understanding between Washington and Islamabad.
Article extracted from this publication >> December 3, 1993
