Posted on 02/15/2011 10:22:48 AM PST by James C. Bennett
WASHINGTON: US President Barack Obama has proposed to Congress a $3.1 billion in financial assistance to Pakistan for the year 2012.
This is part of the administration's ongoing effort towards its continued funding for operations and assistance in key regions of the world -- Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan.
Of this as many as $1.9 billion in assistance has been proposed to promote a secure, stable, democratic and prosperous Pakistan with a focus on energy, economic growth, agriculture, the delivery of health and education services, and strengthening the Government of Pakistan's capacity to govern effectively and accountably.
$1.5 billion of this is part of the Kerry-Lugar-Berman Bill.
Another $45 million has been proposed in operations to support infrastructure for maintaining the US government civilian and diplomatic presence and to support educational and cultural exchange programs to build bridges with civil society.
"We have $350 million in that part of the budget for FMF (Foreign Military Financing) programs, which is part of the five-year agreement that we have made with the government of Pakistan," a State Department official told reporters.
In addition to $1.9 billion, Obama has also proposed $1.2 billion to Pakistan under the Overseas Contingency Operations (OCO) Budget.
This includes $1.1 billion for the Pakistan Counterinsurgency Capability Fund (PCCF) to provide critical equipment and training for Pakistani security forces, increasing the ability of the Pakistani government to combat insurgents inside that country and eliminating the insurgent's capacity to conduct cross-border operations in Afghanistan that jeopardize US lives and the mission there.
In 2010, Pakistan received $79 million under OCO budget, which is estimated to jump to $1.3 billion in 2011.
"So the unique part of the budget, the extraordinary part of the budget is the PCCF. The enduring part of the budget is more of our economic and military assistance that's going to be sustainable over the long term," he said.
An OCO budget is of great help as we transition from military-led to civilian-led operations since it provides a mechanism through which we can view and budget for a transition to a more normal diplomatic presence in these countries when appropriate, the budgetary proposals said.
February 10, 2011 | The Times of India
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2671612/posts
WASHINGTON: Despite being in the throes of a crippling political and economic crisis and almost entirely dependent on handouts from the United States and multilateral aid, Pakistan is poking a finger in the international community’s eye. Days after it was revealed that Islamabad has doubled its nuclear weapons’ inventory in the past decade, American experts have discovered that it has begun building a fourth plutonium-producing reactor to produce even more nuclear bombs to add to the 100-plus it already has.
The Washington-based Institute for Science and International Security (ISIS) announced on Wednesday that it has obtained commercial satellite imagery from January 15, 2011 that shows what appears to be a fourth reactor under construction at Pakistan’s Khushab nuclear site. The reactor construction was not visible during a previous satellite pictures last November.
“Pakistan is determined to produce considerably more plutonium for nuclear weapons,” ISIS said in an outline of the progression of the country’s plutonium reactors. While Pakistan’s initial nuclear weapons were enriched uranium-based, it expanded to plutonium-based weapons (which are more compact) with the commissioning in 1998 of the first reactor at the Khushab site, which lies southwest of Islamabad. Sometime between 2000 and 2002, Pakistan began constructing a second reactor at the site, and in 2006, it began building a third reactor, adjacent to the second Khushab reactor.
ISIS, a think-tank with expertise in nuclear proliferation, said that in commercial satellite imagery from December 2009, vapor could be seen rising from some of the second reactor’s cooling tower fan blades, indicating that the second reactor was at least at some stage of initial operation. Vapor can again be seen rising from some of the second reactor’s cooling towers in the January 15, 2011 imagery, though none can be seen yet over the third reactor’s cooling towers, while construction of the fourth has just begun.
The U.S administration, as usual, is not expected to react to the development amid mounting criticism that it is effectively funding Pakistan’s nuclear weapons program because Islamabad does not generate enough revenues on its own and lives on international dole. The country is in such bad shape that its state-owned airline PIA and its railways are now crippled by strikes and shortages. The federal cabinet resigned en masse earlier this week to pave way for a smaller ministry to save money amid growing disquiet about the profligate ways of its politicians and the military.
But none of this appears to have affected its nuclear program, that in effect are indirectly underwritten by Washington, and which in turn has made no effort to rein in the unstable country’s massing of nuclear weapons.
The Obama administration last month quietly swallowed an expert report that Pakistan had doubled its nuclear weapons stockpile to over 100, much of which happened during the Bush dispensation, and was well on its way to becoming the world’s fifth largest nuclear weapons state, overtaking France. While doing so, Pakistan has also blocked a prospective international treaty to end production of fissile material that every other nation wants to bring into force.
Analysts surmise that Pakistan is pushing the envelope because it believes it has a foot on the American jugular going into Afghanistan and also that it (Pakistan), with a huge arsenal of nuclear weapons, “is too big to fail.” But some experts are starting to question its premise.
“Giving the Pakistani government more money because it is ‘too big to fail’ is a doomed policy in every way except one: it allows us to believe (for the time being) that nuclear weapons will not fall into the hands of people who would like to detonate those weapons in Long Beach or Baltimore Harbor,” John Ellis, a U.S Consultant wrote this week. Even U.S lawmakers, who signed off on the $ 7.5 billion Kerry-Lugar aid bill, are starting to question their munificence particularly in light of the spat over jailed American national Raymond Davis.
How about ZERO dollars for Pakistan until they bring
us the heads of the terrorists.
How about $.50 ?
I don’t know, Davey.
What’s a Bunker Buster worth? Maybe a half-million apiece?
Then I say we deliver this $3.1B in installments...6200 of ‘em.
Note the link DIRECTLY below the headline. Propaganda. This freak has co-opted damned near the entire world media.
Not a cent to pockyston.
Actually websites almost always place locality-relevant advertisements on web pages. What that means is that when the page is viewed in, say, Australia, a different ad will appear there.
Where do we get off as a nation to have a government that puts every American in the hole and further in debt so these politicians and bureaucrats can give it allegedly to bribe other countries? Most of them don’t even listen to us.
End ALL foreign aid now, NO exceptions.
The list, ping
Let me know if you would like to be on or off the ping list
Obama needs to be stopped
When you are broke and running up all your credit cards, you don't run up and down the street giving cash to your neighbors.
How about the Treasonous Obama regime securing our border,with that money!!!!!
What is stopping Pakistan from printing money from nothing like we do?
If they need extra money, let them print it themselves.
We shouldn't be printing money for foreign governments that are perfectly capable of printing their own.
Exactly. Or a few tactical nukes at population centers, just to keep them in fine Moslem rage.
I understand that, but this is a direct link to one of the regime’s propaganda outlets.
Sending 1 cent to an America-hating hellhole is too much. Nothing. Not 1 cent.
Borrowed from China?
How come we have all sort of money for people in other countries but not for American citizens and infrastructure?
Yes , we need to stop all foreign aid. It is insane to borrow money from the Chinese to give to our enemies free. If we need to help someone out , it must be a nation that supports the U.S. Giving money to Pakistan would be like the U.S. giving aid to Hitler during WWII.
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