Pentagon favors resuming training Pakistani officers in US academies

WASHINGTON (AFP) Aug 11, 2004
A top Pentagon official said he favors resuming training Pakistani officers in US military academies as a way of increasing US influence in the country's armed forces and reducing that of Islamic radicals.

"You don't promote military reform in a country like Pakistan by cutting off education for Pakistani military officers here and pushing them into the one alternative, which is the Islamic extremists," Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz told the House Armed Services Committee Tuesday.

"It's not as though if we leave them alone, nobody else will go out to recruit them," he added.

The United States cut off military assistance to Pakistan in 1990 following the discovery of its program to develop nuclear weapons.

Sanctions were further tightened after Pakistan's nuclear tests in May 1998 and the military coup of 1999 that brought President Pervez Musharraf to power.

But the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on the United States and Pakistan's quick agreement to support Washington in the war on terror have prompted the administration of President George W. Bush to reconsider its stance.

The sanctions were waived to enable the United States to resume its military assistance program to provide spare parts and equipment to enhance Pakistan's capacity to police its western border.

In 2003, Bush announced his intention to provide Pakistan three billion dollars in economic and military aid over the next five years.

But training of Pakistani cadets in US military academies has not resumed.

"I think one of our problems in Pakistan today is that for too long we deprived ourselves of one of the most important instruments of influence in a country where the military is one of the most important institutions, and that is the contact between our military and their military," Wolfowitz stated.

The deputy defense secretary praised Pakistan's contribution to the war on terror, saying that hundreds of suspected operatives of the al-Qaeda terror network amd more than 10 of its more senior leaders have been arrested on Pakistani territory since the fall of 2001.

Wolfowitz called President Musharraf "a friend of the US," adding that "no leader has taken greater risks, or faces more daunting challenges from within and without."

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