KABUL - Outgoing American ambassador to the United Nations, Nikki Haley, has accused Pakistan of harboring terrorists, asking Washington not give to Islamabad “even a dollar” until the country changes its policies, a media report said Tuesday.
Nikki Haley made the comments last week while giving an interview to The Atlantic. “We don’t need to be giving money to countries that go behind our back and try and stop us from doing things.”
“We don’t need to be giving money to those that don’t want to be our partners, because there’s a lot of countries that do want to be our partners, and we just need to be smart about it,” said Haley, the first Indian-American ever appointed to a Cabinet position in any US presidential administration.
“The one example I’ll give you is, look at Pakistan. Giving them over a billion dollars, and they continue to ‘harbour’ terrorists that turn around and kill our soldiers—that’s never okay.
“We shouldn’t even give them a dollar until they correct it. Use the billion dollars. That’s not a small amount of change. Tell them, ‘You have to do these things before we will even start to help you with your military or start to help you on counterterrorism.’ It’s those types of things that you really want to kind of look at,” she added.
Earlier this week, Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan had said that his country would not be a “hired gun” of the US.
“I would never want to have a relationship where Pakistan is treated like a hired gun — given money to fight someone else’s war. We should never put ourselves in this position again. It not only cost us human lives, the devastation of areas bordering Afghanistan, but it also cost us our dignity. We would like a proper relationship with the US,” he told the Washington Post.
“Like the US, Pakistan too seeks peace in Afghanistan which is in its interest as well,” the PM had said, as he assured his government “will do its best”. (Pajhwok)