WASHINGTON – According to *Washington Times,link*Abattle is brewing inside the Trump administration over whether toreconsider the president’s aggressive policy of withholding millions ofdollars in sensitive security assistance to Pakistan on grounds that theSouth Asian nation is ready to reconsider its willingness to provide safehaven to terrorists nearly two decades after 9/11.
Washington has long made clear its frustration with Islamabad’s “toleranceof Taliban” and other “Islamist factions” within its borders, saying itenables an “insurgency in neighboring Afghanistan” that Kabul andWashington have been unable to defeat.
With Pakistan last month holding a democratic transition of power for onlythe second time in its 71-year history, some of Mr. Trump’s top advisersargue that the time is ripe for Washington to begin restoring the militaryaid that the president cut from Islamabad at the start of the year.
“The Pakistanis needed to be put in their place,” one former White Houseadviser on Pakistan told The Washington Times, but a former U.S. ambassadorto the country countered that “the recent cutting of security funds was anabsolutely terrible decision.”