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US defends sale of F-16s to Pak
Ashish Kumar Sen writes from Washington

The Bush administration on Friday insisted its decision to sell F-16 fighter jets to Pakistan and “multi-role combat aircraft” to India would help promote stability in the region even as critics warned the sales would trigger an arms race between the neighbours.

“Stability comes from a sense of security and to the extent that we can contribute to Pakistan’s sense of security and India’s sense of security that will contribute to regional stability,” State Department deputy spokesman Adam Ereli told reporters in Washington.

A senior State Department official, speaking on the condition of anonymity, said it is in “both India’s interest and Pakistan’s interest and in America’s interest that Pakistan feel secure, if it doesn’t obtain that security at the expense of making everybody else feel insecure.”

If India and Pakistan don’t feel secure, the official said, the thaw in bilateral ties is “going to vanish as those mutual insecurities feed a spiral of hostility and suspicion.”

Adding that the Bush administration was trying to avoid this situation, the official said Washington was “trying to move forward in a way where both countries are able to sustain the sense of security they’re going to need to build on the diplomatic openings that you’re seeing on the subcontinent.”

In an interview to the Washington Post, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said the Bush administration was trying to “solidify and extend relations” with India and Pakistan.

“If you look at it in terms of the region what we are trying to do is break out of the notion that this is a hyphenated relationship somehow, that anything that happens that is good for Pakistan is bad for India, and vice versa,” she added.

Bush administration officials say the sale of fighter jets will have no significant impact on the military balance on the subcontinent. However, Washington has not set “any fixed limit” on how many aircraft Pakistan can buy.

Walter Andersen, a former director of intelligence at the State Department and currently assistant director of the South Asia studies programme at Johns Hopkins University’s School of International Studies in Washington, agrees the sale would not shift the balance of power in South Asia.

The decision to announce the sale was made after a lot of careful study, Mr. Andersen told the Tribune. “The conclusion that was reached was that the U.S. has good military relations with both Pakistan and India. The package the U.S. is offering India is quite impressive.”

The senior State Department official said Washington could enter bids to sell not just F-16s, but the more advanced, twin engine, carrier-based F-18s to India.

A spokesman at Lockheed Martin, the Bethesda, Maryland-based manufacturer of the F-16 and F-18, said while the former aircraft comes with a price tag in the mid-$30 million range, the F-18 is considerably more expensive. “Costs vary by the pound, and the F-18 is up to 30 per cent heavier,” he told the Tribune. The cost also depends on the accessories that are added to the fighters.

The U.S. is also prepared to discuss even more fundamental issues of defense transformation with India, including transformative systems in areas such as command and control, early warning and missile defense.

“So you have this very robust strategic dialogue; in parallel, there’s an energy dialogue that would include civil, nuclear and nuclear safety issues,” the State Department official said.

Husain Haqqani, a scholar at the Washington-based Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, said Friday’s developments represented a return to the “past pattern of the India-Pakistan-United States triangle.”

“By offering Pakistan weapons, even though a similar offer has been made to India, the United States is reinforcing the Pakistani military’s view that America’s role in the region is essentially that of a supplier of weapons to Pakistan - and an equaliser for the regional equation which India dominates,” Mr. Haqqani told The Tribune.

Former senator South Dakota Republican Senator Larry Pressler, who sponsored the 1985 Pressler Amendment that ultimately forced the cancellation of an earlier sale of F-16s to Pakistan, called the resumption of the sale of fighter jets to Pakistan “an atrocity.”

“This is just a disastrous thing,” Mr. Pressler told the Washington Post. “It raises Pakistan, a country that doesn’t stand for anything we stand for, to the level of India. It has nothing to do with fighting terrorism.” Instead, he said, “it gives Pakistan a delivery vehicle for its nuclear weapons.”

Congressman Frank Pallone, New Jersey Democrat and former co-chair of the Congressional Caucus on India and Indian Americans, said the sale of F-16s to Pakistan was a “step backward in U.S.-India relations.”

Lockheed offers ‘exclusive’ F-16s

New Delhi, March 27
US aviation manufacturer Lockheed Martin has offered to manufacture “exclusive” F-16 fighters for the Indian Air Force, much superior to any existing fighters in service world over.

“If India’s requirements are beyond any existing fighters, we are prepared to make upgraded F-16s to India’s specifications with complete transfer of technology,” Mike Kelly, Senior Executive of Lockheed Martin said in comments that assume importance after the US Administration’s decision to clear sales of high-technology fighters to India and Pakistan.