The Trump administration has suspended more than a decade-long military training programme of Pakistani personnel at the US institutions, a media report said on Saturday, days after Islamabad and Moscow signed an agreement to allow Pakistani troops to receive training at the Russian defence centres.
Pakistan and Russia signed an agreement on Tuesady at their first Joint Military Consultative Committee (JMCC) meeting in Rawalpindi during which the two sides discussed the present status of the bilateral defence relations and agreed that Pakistani troops will receive training at the Russian military training institutes.
The relations between Pakistan and the US nosedived this January after President Donald Trump accused Islamabad of giving nothing to Washington but “lies and deceit” and providing “safe haven” to terrorists.
The US Congress also passed a bill to slash Pakistan’s defence aid to USD 150 million, significantly below the historic level of more than USD one billion per year.
The US military institutions are struggling to fill the 66 slots they had kept aside for officers from Pakistan for the next academic year, as the Trump administration refused to provide funds for their training, the Dawn newspaper reported, quoting official sources.
The fund for the training of Pakistani officers came from the US government’s International Military Education and Training Programme (IMET) but no funds were made available for Pakistan for the next academic year, it said.
The suspension of the training first became apparent when the US National Defence University (NDU) in Washington, which has had reserved seats for Pakistani officers for more than a decade, told the outgoing Pakistani officers that the varsity has been asked to fill the positions for the next year with officers from other nations.