WASHINGTON: India on Nov.26 conveyed at the highest level its concern to the Clinton administration at the latter’s decision to repeal the Pressler Amendment under which the US had stopped its economic and military aid to Pakistan three years ago.
India’s Ambassador Siddhartha Shankar Ray who met Secretary of State Warren Christopher is understood to have said that New Delhi is particularly worried at the possibility of resumption of military aid to Pakistan.
Such a development, the possibility of which would be heightened with the revocation of the 1985 law, would threaten the region’s security environ and jeopardize India’s efforts at normalizing relations with Pakistan.
However, Ray is reportedly said India has no objection as such to America resuming its economic assistance to Pakistan.
The US economic and military assistance to Pakistan during 1980s had been of the order of $650 million a year but it was stopped in October 1990 in view of Islamabad’s efforts to build weapons of mass destruction.
Though the administration is keen on the withdrawal of the Pressler Amendment, Congress, which was responsible for putting it on the statute as its contributions to the nuclear nonproliferation, it’s bound to resist the move on the floor of the House.
Official sources have clarified that the proposed change does not mean any lessening in the US concern over Pakistani nuclear program but it wants to widen the scope of the law to cover other nations currency engaged in efforts to build weapons of mass destruction.
Article extracted from this publication >> December 3, 1993
