US pacifies Pak with new F-16 aircraft gift
Chidanand Rajghatta, TNN 14 October 2009, 09:54pm IST
WASHINGTON: Amid efforts to mollify a surcharged anti-American mood in Pakistan, the United States on Tuesday rolled out the first of 18 new F-16
fighter aircraft produced for its ally even as officials from the two countries scrambled to agree on placatory language to accompany the Kerry-Lugar bill to be signed by President Obama in the next 72 hours.
The ''insulting'' tone of the so-called K-L bill, which doles out $ 7.5 billion aid to Islamabad over five years subject to its ceasing support for terrorism, stopping nuclear proliferation, and reigning in its hyper-aggressive military, has inflamed Pakistan. Bowing to a diktat from its military junta, Pakistans civilian government earlier this week rushed its foreign minister Shah Mehmood Qureshi back to Washington to convey the countrys mood and concerns over the language in the bill.
Qureshis talks with ****** pointman Richard Holbrooke and other senior US officials and lawmakers on the subject resulted in nothing more than assurances that Washington would not infringe on Pakistans sovereignty. But the US would not rewrite the legislation, although Senator Kerry is expected to issue further clarifications aimed at pacifying Pakistan. The President thereafter is expected to ive his assent to the bill with a ''signing statement'' that might reiterate US respect for Pakistans sovereignty, even though the argument in Pakistan is that the legislation undermines it.
That signing ceremony is expected before the weekend, possibly as soon as Thursday. President Obama is conducting a full and final review of his Pak-Af policy in the White Houses underground Situation Room on Wednesday morning, following which he will emerge to host a Diwali celebration in the White House, the first time a US President would have attended such an event.
While all this was playing out in Washington DC where Pakistan has come to be seen as a distasteful ally (''I absolutely have to hold my nose when I work with the Pakistani government,'' a US analyst said on camera in a TV program broadcast Tuesday night), a different scene was unfolding at a Lockheed Martin plant in Fort Worth, Texas.
Watched by the Air Force chiefs, diplomats, officials from the two countries and local law-makers, Lockheed Martin unveiled the first of 18 Block 52 F-16s made for Pakistan under an order ironically named ''Peace Drive 1.''
The 18-jet order, which includes 12 F-16Cs and six F-16Ds, was scaled down from the original 32, which Pakistan could not afford. But even the whittled down order has kept Lockheed Martins Forth Worth plant, which is otherwise nearing the end of its life, humming for awhile, which is why the event saw the attendance of lawmaker Kay Granger from the adjoining Texas 12th district.
The ceremony also saw the presence of Pakistans ambassador to the US, Hussain Haqqani, whose job is on the line because Pakistans military believes he had a role in undermining its primacy by getting Washington to legislate civilian oversight over it. In an interview to a foreign policy journal on his way to the event, Haqqani appears to have hinted that he has the capacity to embarrass the military if he was fired from his job, a threat that is certain to inflame the already fraught civilian-military confrontation brewing in Islamabad.
Meanwhile, Lockheed Martin said the 18-jets order, including the two-seater F-16D model rolled out Tuesday, will be delivered in the 2009-2010 timeframe. The deliveries will bring to 54 the number of F-16s acquired by Pakistan since it first began receiving them from the US in 1982.
While a few of them are believed to have attrited, Pakistan will still have around 50 F-16s in its inventory at the end of the current order.
''Peace Drive is the flagship of modernization for Pakistan's Air Force. It is the latest configuration of the best 4th generation multirole fighter available in the world today,'' John Larson, vice president of F-16 programs for Lockheed Martin, said at the roll-out ceremony.
US pacifies Pak with new F-16 aircraft gift - US - World - The Times of India
