US: Defence bill has no bearing on aid to Pakistan

The Obama Administration today said that there is no bearing on the current aid structure to the House bill that freezes USD 700 million aid to Pakistan; which a State Department spokesperson argued only requires a certification and that too has a waiver clause.From what weve seen, from what our embassy (in Islamabad) has seen, there has been some misunderstanding of this in the Pakistani press. What this piece of legislation requires is that the administration make certain certifications as to how our general relationship with Pakistan is going in certain categories in order to release the money, State Department spokesperson Victoria Nuland told reporters at her daily news conference.But this is not about cutting funding or freezing funding. Were working on setting the funding levels with the Congress. It is about imposing on the administration certain certification requirements before we would release the money that the Congress would give, she said.This is very similar to procedures that we have on other kinds of money for countries around the world. These are certification requirements. In addition, I would say that, you know, they usually include some kind of waiver authorities for the Secretary. Id also like to say this in no way impinges on Pakistani sovereignty. There have been some strange assertions in the Pakistani press which are inaccurate, Nuland said.The US official said these are certifications that the US administration has to make to the Congress about how our relationship with Pakistan is going. These are not responsibilities of the government of Pakistan, she said.