WASHINGTON: The US State Department has warned that congressional restrictions on foreign aid limit the president’s ability to conduct foreign policy.

However, at a Monday afternoon news briefing in Washington, the main US foreign policy-making body acknowledged that despite these reservations, the administration will have to follow a recent congressional restriction on a deal to sell eight F-16s to Pakistan.

“We have told the Pakistanis that they should put forward national funds for that purpose,” said the department’s spokesman John Kirby while explaining that the US administration was not against selling the planes to Pakistan but it could no longer subsidise the deal.

The withdrawal of subsidy will force Pakistan to bear the entire cost of more than $700 million if it wishes to buy the aircraft. The original arrangement required Pakistan to pay about $270 million while the rest was to come from the US foreign military financing budget.

At a congressional hearing last week, US lawmakers made it clear that they would not allow the Obama administration to use US funds for the deal.

On Friday, a State Department official told Dawn that Congress had placed a hold on financing the deal and administration is legally bound to follow this restriction.

The move practically kills the deal and Pakistan may find it difficult to buy the planes at two and a half times more than the agreed price.

“Effective engagement with Pakistan, we believe, is critical to promoting the consolidation of democratic institutions and economic stability, and supporting the government’s counter-terrorism activities and capabilities,” said Mr Kirby while explaining why the administration still wanted to sell the planes to Pakistan despite the restriction.

“As a matter of longstanding principle, the Department of State opposes conditions to the release of appropriated foreign assistance funds,” he said. “We believe that such conditions limit the President and the Secretary’s ability to conduct foreign policy in the best interest of the United States.”

When asked to explain if the deal was still valid, Mr Kirby pointed out that Congress too had approved the sale, but key US lawmakers had prevented the administration from using foreign military funding for the planes.

“Given congressional objections, we have told the Pakistanis that they should put forward national funds for that purpose,” he added.

Asked if the administration was now looking for other options to give the F-16s to Pakistan, Mr Kirby said: “I think I’ve answered the question.”

While refusing to subsidise the deal, Congress asked Islamabad to take “some specific actions”, if it wants the subsidy, which include preventing the Haqqani network from using its territory to carry out attacks inside Afghanistan.

As the latest State Department briefing shows, the Obama administration still contends that it’s in US interest to go ahead with the sale.

Reports in the US media indicate that Chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Senator Bob Corker, used his authority as the head of a key policy-making panel to bring down the F-16 deal with Pakistan.

According to some reports, Senator Corker and some other lawmakers told the administration that they would keep blocking the funds even if it made other moves to provide the planes to Pakistan.

They argued that they would only release the funds if Pakistan accepted their demands, which include a bipartisan call for releasing Dr Shakil Afridi and another from Congressman Dana Rohrabacher for sending military operations in Balochistan.

Senator Corker told reporters in Washington that he was using the hold to force “behaviour changes” in Pakistan.

When asked whether he would lift his hold, the senator said he was waiting to hear from US military leaders in Afghanistan on the sale of F-16s to Pakistan.

“We’ll see,” the chairman said. “The purpose is only to cause (Pakistan) to cooperate more fully with us on the Haqqani network and others.”

At last week’s congressional hearing on Afghanistan and Pakistan, a senior US diplomat told the lawmakers that Islamabad has been successfully using the planes in the war against terrorists.

“The Pakistanis have developed a precision strike capability that they use in the F-16s they have right now to take out targets [including the Pakistani Taliban],” Ambassador Richard Olson said.

A spokesman for the department’s Bureau of Political-Military Affairs, David McKeeby, also endorsed these views. In a statement to media, he pointed out that F-16s were critical to the success of Pakistan’s counter-terrorism operations.

“These operations reduce the ability of militants to use Pakistani territory as a safe haven for terrorism and a base of support for the insurgency in Afghanistan,” he added.

“We view Foreign Military Financing as an essential element of US support for Pakistan’s efforts to increase stability in its western border region and ensure overall stability within its own borders,” Mr McKeeby said.

Published in Dawn, May 4th, 2016