After the Manmohan Singh-Barack Obama meeting here last month, Pakistan Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif sought to deride his Indian counterpart for bringing his complaints against Pakistan to Washington like a ‘dehati aurat’.
Without so much as batting an eyelid, Sharif is now doing much the same, coming to Washington with the hackneyed plea for American intervention on Kashmir, regardless of its rejection by successive US administrations over long years. Even before arriving in Washington on Sunday for a meeting with President Obama, Sharif chose to rake up the Kashmir issue during his stopover in london, seeking US intervention on a matter which is deemed to be purely bilateral under the Simla Accord.
US officials did not wait for Sharif to land in Washington as they summarily rejected his call. Stressing that American policy on Kashmir “has not changed an iota”, they restated the well-known US position that it is for India and Pakistan to determine the “pace, scope and character” of their dialogue on this matter.
Even while snubbing Pakistan on the Kashmir issue, the United States has sought to defend its accommodation of its other key demand for resumption of “security assistance” suspended in the wake of the 2011-12 diplomatic standoff.
Having decided to clear more than $1.6 billion in military and economic aid in multiple instalments, the State Department has for a start asked US Congress to resume over $300 million in blocked security assistance.
“This is part of a long process of restarting security assistance cooperation after implementation was slowed during the bilateral challenges of 2011 and 2012,” said Deputy Spokesperson Marie Harf, but clarified that civilian assistance had remained uninterrupted throughout.
Hours after Sharif’s arrival, Secretary of State John Kerry held discussions and hosted a dinner in honour of the Pakistani leader ahead of his meeting with President Obama on Wednesday.
“Both sides agreed on the importance of our continued counterterrorism cooperation, and that extremism is countered in part by opportunities arising from greater economic stability,” the State Department said in a statement.
It’s Sharif’s second visit to Washington as Prime Minister. The last one in 1999 was in the wake of Pakistan’s Kargil misadventure. Back home, Sharif lost power in a military coup by the then Army Chief, Gen. Pervez Musharraf.
Welcoming Sharif on Sunday, Kerry said: “He (Sharif) was just telling me that he hasn’t been here since 1999 when he was last in office. He has received me several times very generously in Pakistan. We’re very anxious to have a series of high-level, important discussions over the course of the next few days – the Vice President, the President, tonight’s dinner.”