ISLAMABAD: Pakistan’s foreign minister Bilawal Bhutto-Zardari has told a local newspaper that the United States is willing to provide necessary financial resources to strengthen his country’s border security amid rising number of attacks from Afghanistan.
Bhutto-Zardari recently visited New York and Washington where he held official meetings with government functionaries, congressional leaders, Pakistani-American businesspeople and prominent community members.
In response to a query from Pakistan’s Dawn newspaper, the foreign minister mentioned his interactions with Senators Bob Menendez and Lindsey Graham who told him they had been provided “funding in the 2023 budget to help us with border security.”
US State Department Spokesperson Ned Price also told a media briefing in Washington on December 19 that a proscribed militant network, Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan, had increased cross-border attacks in Pakistan while offering to help Islamabad deal with the situation.
“We have partnered with our Pakistani friends to help them take on this challenge,” he said. “We stand ready to assist, whether with this unfolding situation or more broadly.”
Dawn quoted Touqir Hussain, a former Pakistani diplomat currently teaching at Georgetown University, as saying the situation in Afghanistan posed a “shared challenge” to both countries which could not be addressed by either one of them on their own.
Hussain maintained the American offer was also “part of the ongoing US efforts to rehabilitate [its] image” in Pakistan.
The administration in Islamabad recently shut a busy border crossing with Afghanistan after armed men from across the frontier targeted a Pakistani checkpoint.
The Afghan Taliban forces also fired mortar shells on small Pakistani settlements situated along the border, making the foreign office in Islamabad remind Kabul it was the collective responsibility of the two countries to protect the life and property of civilians on both sides of the frontier.
