Asia

Home page

Asia

Pakistan province cancels US aid deals: official

20 May 2011 21:48 (UTC +04:00)

Baku â€“ APA. Pakistanâ€™s most politically important province, Punjab, will cancel four aid agreements with United states in protest at continued US drone strikes in the country, a senior official said on Friday, APA reports quoting AFP.
The US strikes doubled last year, with more than 100 such operations killing over 670 people, according to an AFP tally, and the CIA has said the covert programme has severely disrupted Al-Qaedaâ€™s leadership.
"The Punjab government has decided in principle to cancel four memorandums of understanding (MOUs) with the US in protest against the drone strikes," a senior provincial government official told AFP on condition of anonymity.
He said that the provincial government had signed the MOUs, worth 20 billion rupees ($232 million), with USAID in the areas of education, health and solid waste management.
"These projects were to be completed in three years," he said, adding that Punjab government would now fund them to ensure they were carried out according to the timetable.
"We will now finance them from our own resources," the official said, adding that other spending would be cut and tax collection efficiency improved to make up for the lost funding.
"Our government would not like the US to keep violating our sovereignty in return for the aid."
He said that the government would also reconsider other US-funded aid projects, but did not give their number or the total amount of money involved.
When asked if the US government had officially been informed about the cancellation of the agreements, he said: "It will be done pretty soon."
US embassy spokesman Alberto Rodriguez said there had been "no official notification" of any decision to scrap US aid projects in Punjab.
"There are a lot of projects that they have ongoing in Punjab," he told AFP.
The officialâ€™s comments came shortly after a US drone strike killed four militants in the North Waziristan tribal region on Friday.
The strikes inflame anti-American feeling in Pakistan, which worsened after the US raid that killed Osama bin Laden in the northwestern town of Abbottabad on May 2.
Pakistanâ€™s civilian and military leaders were left angry and embarrassed by the unilateral US raid that discovered and killed Al-Qaedaâ€™s chief living, possibly for years, two hoursâ€™ drive from the Pakistani capital.
It rocked the countryâ€™s seemingly powerful security establishment, with its intelligence services and military widely accused of incompetence or complicity over bin Ladenâ€™s presence.
Pakistanâ€™s parliament demanded no repeat of the raid, although US President Barack Obama has reserved the right to act again, and Islamabad insisted US drone strikes targeting Taliban and Al-Qaeda leaders on its territory must end.
The military threatened to review intelligence cooperation in the war on Al-Qaeda and Islamabad called the raid "unauthorised unilateral action".