ELECTION 99
US EDITION
COLUMNISTS
DIARY
SPECIALS
INTERVIEWS
CAPITAL BUZZ
REDIFF POLL
DEAR REDIFF
THE STATES
YEH HAI INDIA!
ELECTIONS
ARCHIVES

Search Rediff

Waiver on Pressler won't affect US stand: Ackerman

Prominent Democratic Congressman Gary L Ackerman said he has been informed the Clinton administration had no plans to sell or transfer any arms or equipment to Pakistan.

In a statement last night, he said that senior officials had ''assured'' him that despite the waiver authority the president would get on the Pressler and Glenn Amendments, there is no plan to exercise those waivers for arms sales to Pakistan -- not now and not in the foreseeable future.

Ackerman, who is co-chairman of the Congressional Caucus on India and Indian-Americans, asked the administration to immediately impose punitive measures against the new regime of General Pervez Musharaff, invoking section 508 of the Foreign Operations, Export Financing and Related Programmes Appropriations Act, 1999, which prohibits US aid of any kind to any country whose duly elected head of government is deposed by military coup or decree.

In another development, the US house of representatives yesterday formally approved a bill that would authorise Clinton to lift permanently the sanctions imposed on both Pakistan and India in protest against their 1998 nuclear tests.

Ackerman, a leading member of the House International Relations Committee, urged the Clinton administration to instruct the International Monetary Fund and other international financial institutions not to approve any fresh loans to Pakistan as long as the coup in Islamabad was not undone and also block any approved loans from being disbursed.

According to reports, Pakistan has finalised agreements with international banks earlier this summer for renewal of 877 million dollars in commercial loans and struck a deal with western governments to roll over 3.3 billion dollars in credits under the umbrella of the Paris Club.

UNI

Tell us what you think of this report