Pakistan has received an unspecified number of the state-of-the-art F-16 fighter jets from the United States while others are being delivered, Pakistan Foreign Minister Khurshid M Kasuri has said.
Kasuri, however, did not elaborate on the number of jets delivered by Washington.
"We have reduced the numbers because of budget constraints," Kasuri said, adding, "The Americans are interested in selling as many as we want."
Islamabad wanted to buy 86 F-16s but after the October 2006 earthquake, which dealt a serious blow to the country's economy, Pakistan informed the US that was in a position to buy only 36 of them.
The foreign minister said that Pakistan had requested affiliated weapons systems with the F-16s and that those are also being delivered. However, he did not specify what sort of weapons systems Pakistan had requested.
Earlier, reports had said that the US did not want to deliver the systems that can be used for carrying a nuclear warhead.
But Kasuri was quoted as saying by The Dawn daily in a report from Washington that Pakistan would not accept "any toothless weapon" and would only take "what meets our defence need."
The US, he said, has also agreed to sell new equipment to help Pakistan improve its capability to monitor the restive Pak-Afghan border to check the movement of the Al Qaeda and Taliban militants. He told a briefing in Washington that the Americans have agreed to train Pakistani troops as well.
In March 2005, the US agreed to sell F-16 fighter jets to Pakistan, reversing a 15-year ban on the supply of these sophisticated jets following a dispute over Islamabad's nuclear programme.
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