The military has not been officially informed of the decision to suspend aid, said military spokesman Major Genera Athar Abbas.—File photo

ISLAMABAD: The Pakistani military was defiant Monday after Washington said it would suspend $800 million worth of security aid, saying it was capable of fighting militants without US assistance.

“The army in the past as well as at present has conducted successful military operations using its own resources without any external support whatsoever,” military spokesman Major General Athar Abbas told AFP.

Abbas said the military had not been officially informed of the decision to suspend aid.

US President Barack Obama's chief of staff, William Daley, confirmed in a television interview on Sunday that the United States has decided to withhold almost a third of its annual $2.7 billion security assistance to Islamabad.

Relations between the key allies in the war on Al-Qaeda drastically worsened after US commandos killed Osama bin Laden in Pakistan in May, humiliating the Pakistani military and opening it to allegations of complicity or incompetence.

Abbas referred AFP to an extraordinary statement issued by Chief of Army Staff General Ashfaq Kayani on June 9 as part of the bin Laden fallout which recommended that US military aid be redirected towards civilians.

The suspended aid includes about $300 million to reimburse Pakistan for some of the costs of deploying more than 100,000 soldiers along the Afghan border, according to The New York Times.

Pakistan says it has 140,000 soldiers in the northwest, more than the 99,000 American troops in Afghanistan, fighting a local Taliban insurgency.

Ties between the US and Pakistan are now at their lowest point since Islamabad officially broke with the Taliban and sided with Washington after the 9/11 attacks, analysts said.

One Western security official in Islamabad told AFP that bin Laden's killing had hardened America's approach to Pakistan, but the underlying difference was that the so-called allies cannot agree who or what the enemy really is.

“The problem is that the United States and Pakistan are allies, but they don't have the same enemy and so relations will only continue along this chaotic path,” the official said.

Analyst Rasul Baksh Raees noted the deep antipathy to America that is prevalent in Pakistan, but added: “I think Pakistan and the United States will come to some kind of understanding soon to sort out irritants.”