US officials urge Trump to end 'toxic' relationship with Pakistan

Renowned Indian lobbyist Ted Poe says Washington should immediately set limits of its indulgence with Islamabad


Tashkeel Ahmed Farooqui March 10, 2017
UNITED STATES - MAY 29: Rep. Ted Poe, R-Texas, arrives for the House Judiciary Committee hearing on "Oversight of the United States Department of Homeland Security" on Thursday, May 29, 2014. PHOTO: Bill Clark/CQ Roll Call)

A US congressman and a former defence official have urged the Trump administration to set the limits of its indulgence with Pakistan and stop treating the nation as an ally.

Congressman Ted Poe, a renowned Indian lobbyist, is head of a congressional committee on terrorism, nonproliferation and trade while James Clad was a deputy assistant secretary of defence for Asia in the George W Bush administration.

US lawmakers move bill to designate Pakistan a terrorist state

In a toxic article jointly written by the two for The National Interest magazine, the pair suggested ways in which the US can set the limits of its indulgence with the “nominal ally whose military and security leaders play a lethal double game.”


  • Don’t let the next crisis in South or Southwest Asia deflect our focus.



  • Don’t rush to shore up Pakistan’s balance of payments via the International Monetary Fund (IMF) or other intermediaries, as we’ve done in the past.



  • Let China pay that, if the Pakistanis wish to mortgage their future in that way. (China’s “one belt, one road” infrastructure plans for Pakistan are running into big problems.)



Congressman Ted Poe and James Clad argue that “something must change in our dealings with a terrorist-supporting, irresponsible nuclear-weapons state, and it must change soon.”

Claiming that Islamabad deceived America regarding its nuclear-weapons production and exporting extremist terrorism, they said the “US has acquiesced in a toxic relationship with Pakistan for decades.”

US Senate panel clears bill to block $300m military aid to Pakistan

Poe and Clad confessed that changing America’s “reactive accommodating stance” towards Islamabad would not come quickly. “But it must change — irrespective of trends in US-India relations… there’s a tendency to think of Pakistan as part of a troubling duality, with India and Pakistan in a death spiral. That’s out of date — and we have our issues with India too,” they said.

In September last year, Peo along with another Congressman Dana Rohrabacher had moved a bill to designate Pakistan as a ‘state sponsor of terrorism’. The move testified to growing complexity of relations between the two ostensibly major allies in the ‘war against terror.’

COMMENTS (8)

Sajid Ansari | 6 years ago | Reply Well, well, well, Mr. Ted Poe and James Clad, the renown journalist John Pilger has declared the US as a terrorist state. He says in his article published in The Independent, dated August 30, 1998, " The World's worst Terrorists are the ones based in Washington". He is right as what the US has done in Iraq, Libya and what she is doing in Syria these days along with ISIS, the new name of Al-Qaida, and TTP, terrorist organizations made by US-CIA & Mossad Similarly, India has been sending terrorists, Kulbhushan Jadhav, Kashmir Sing, Ravindra Kaushik, Sarabjit Singh, and Sheikh Shamim, to Pakistan who killed more than 50,000 innocent Pakistanis through bomb blasts in Punjab, Baluchistan,Karachi - Sindh, and they all have also confessed their crimes, plus an India active Lt. Col Promit involved in burning 'Samjhota Express" train wherein 68 Muslims were burned to ashes. So, Mr. Poe and Clad, whether the government of Pakistani declares US and India the terrorist states officially, the people of Pakistan have already declared India and the US are "terrorist states".
FAZ | 7 years ago | Reply One day this guy will blame Pakistan for US failures in Syria, Libya and Iraq too. He needs to watch Charlie Wilson's war this weekend
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