US President Barack Obama was expected to press Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif yesterday on ties with the Taliban, nuclear safety and a range of other fraught issues when the two men met at the White House.
Despite efforts to smooth divisions behind handshakes, smiles and items of agreement, long-standing security concerns were likely to dominate the Oval Office discussions.
Islamabad’s ties with the Afghan Taliban, support for terror groups that target India and the US and its rapidly growing nuclear arsenal are seen by Washington as monumental security headaches.
Washington’s relationship with Islamabad is a prickly one, born of a fraught inter-dependency, but pollinated by mutual mistrust.
Relations were plunged into deep crisis when Osama bin Laden, the mastermind of the Sept. 11, 2001 terror attacks on the US, was discovered to be living in a major Pakistani garrison city.
Since then Sharif has returned to the prime minister’s office and brought an effort to find areas of cooperation, but officials point to little change in the attitude of Pakistan’s powerful security services.
In a signal of that power, Sharif’s visit will reportedly be bookended by visits from the head of Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence and the Chief of Army Staff Raheel Sharif.
“The bottom line is that there are a lot of deep disagreements between these two countries,” said Michael Kugelman of the Woodrow Wilson Center in Washington.
“The US has simply lost patience after so many years of providing arms and money to the Pakistani military, the Pakistanis have simply not done what the US has repeatedly asked them to do in terms of cracking down on militants,” he said.
The meeting comes as the White House increasingly shifts its focus in South Asia to Pakistan’s bitter rival India.
However, Pakistan remains a key player in the region.
Obama recently announced that US troops would be staying in Afghanistan longer than he had promised, but the White House is keen to get the Taliban to the negotiating table.
The US sees Pakistan as one of the few sources of influence over the extremists, and analysts say Washington will use the four-day trip to urge the prime minister to keep pushing for a new round of talks.
Experts say that the new Taliban leader Akhtar Mansoor has close ties to Pakistan.
Kabul has accused Islamabad of harboring and nurturing Taliban insurgents — allowing them to launch attacks in Afghanistan before melting back across the border.
If cooperation is not forthcoming, it is likely to result in growing calls for Washington to limit the transfer of weapons and funds to Islamabad.
Ahead of Sharif’s visit there have been suggestions that cooperation and a possible deal could be reached to more effectively control Pakistan’s nuclear weapons.
However, Sharif was expected to tell Obama that Islamabad would not accept limits on its use of small tactical nuclear weapons, Pakistani officials said on Wednesday.
Pakistan insists smaller weapons would deter a sudden attack by India.
The Obama administration is preparing to sell eight F-16 fighter jets to Pakistan in an attempt to bolster the two countries’ relationship. The aircraft sales, which the US Congress could block, would be a symbolic step given Pakistan’s already large fleet of fighter jets.
US Secretary of State John Kerry met Sharif on Wednesday but Department of State spokesman John Kirby declined to say whether a US call for nuclear restraint was discussed.
Kirby told a regular news briefing Pakistan remained engaged with the international community on nuclear security and added: “We believe that they believe in the importance of nuclear security issues.”
Additional reporting by Reuters
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