WASHINGTON – The Trump administration wants to give new Pakistan PrimeMinister Imran Khan space to explore opportunities to improve relationswith India, a senior Pentagon official has said.
Many new governments come to power in Islamabad and want to improve therelationship with India, but then soon face realities and all thedifficulties, Randall G Schriver, US Assistant Secretary of Defence forAsian and Pacific Security Affairs said at an event organised by CarnegieEndowment for International Peace in Washington.
“We want to give the new prime minister of the new government of Pakistanspace to explore where there may be opportunities to improve relations withIndia,” he said.
He was responding to a question from moderator Ashley Tellis from Carnegieon the triangular relationship between India, the US and Pakistan.
“But in terms of separating what was said during the campaign and what hesaid since the election, we want to give him space to find theopportunities to improve things with India,” Schriver said.
Responding to a question on giving space to Khan, he explained that this isin the context of India-Pakistan relationship and this does not indicateany change in the policy of the Trump administration with regard toPakistan. The Pentagon official insisted that this means no change in itspolicy towards Islamabad and its current approach of cutting financialassistance would continue.
“What I said about giving him space was really in the context of theIndia-Pakistan relationship. We’d certainly like to give him space to makethe right decisions on a variety of things,” he said.
“But our approach of cutting assistance and pressuring Pakistan on theirrelationship with the Taliban, persuading them to come to the table,dealing with terrorist networks, that’ll be sustained. When I say givespace, it’s not changing our approach or our policy. It is the context ofdeveloping opportunities between India and Pakistan,” Schriver said.
The Pentagon also cautioned Pakistan on seeking massive financialassistance from China, which risks its sovereignty.
“If you look at other examples where countries went all in, or largely inwith China, the results have not been particularly good. There has been anerosion of sovereignty and an erosion of control. There are many examplesof that,” he said.
“So, if our friends in Pakistan want to talk about a way out of that orwant to talk about strengthening their economy and deal with that, I’m surewe’d be open to that and trying to work with Pakistan, work eitherbilaterally or through international institutions to try to get them on abetter path,” Schriver said.
The US, he said, is not interested in a failed Pakistan by any stretch ofthe imagination.
“We want them to be successful. We want them to have sovereign control andnot cede that to any outside party, including China. And the economic pieceis probably going to be key to that,” he said.