A day after US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson’s visit to Islamabad, former Senator larry Pressler has demanded that the United States declare Pakistan a terrorist state and impose sanctions on it.
Pressler, a three-term Senator who sponsored the famous “Pressler Amendment” in 1985 to block military and economic aid to Pakistan over its nuclear push, believes that Pakistan is even more dangerous than the other ‘rogue state’ North Korea.
“We should declare Pakistan a terrorist state. We should put certain sanctions on Pakistan,” Pressler said at an event organised by the
Hudson Institute to discuss his new book, “Neighbours in Arms: An American Senator’s Quest for Disarmament in a Nuclear Subcontinent.”
Pressler’s comments came soon after Tillerson’s conclusion of his Islamabad visit during which he is reported to have delivered a tough message to Pakistan on the issue of going after terror sanctuaries on its soil.
“Pakistan needs to, I think, take a clear-eyed view of the situation that they are confronted with in terms of the number of terrorist organisations that find safe haven inside of Pakistan,” Tillerson said, while at the same time assuring Islamabad that the US wants to work closely with it to create “a more stable and secure Pakistan”.
A Republican Senator from South Dakota for 18 years till the end of 1996, Pressler had pushed through his amendment in 1985, but it was enforced only in 1990. Under the amendment, US was to stop most economic and military aid unless the President certified annually that Pakistan did not possess a nuclear explosive device and that the proposed US assistance would significantly reduce the risk of Pakistan coming to possess such a device.
Pressler, replying to a question from a Pakistani embassy official, defended his remarks putting Pakistan and North Korea on the same page and labelling them rogue states.
“From a nuclear dangerous point of view, I think they are both the rogue states in my opinion. They both do not have the interests of the US in mind. Pakistan has and is harbouring terrorists. And North Korea is a threat to the US,” he commented.
In support of his belief that Pakistan is even more dangerous than North Korea, he said it is very unclear who is in charge of Pakistan’s nuclear weaponry.
Commenting that Pakistani nuclear bombs could be sold or stolen and “easily gotten out of Pakistan to just about anywhere in the world”, Pressler said while one person was in charge of North Korea’s nukes, Pakistan had no centralised control system, so its weapons “could be transported to the US fairly simply”.