[The biggest proponent of
putting foreign aid and military reimbursements to Pakistan on a steady footing
is the man President Barack Obama is leaning toward naming as secretary of
state: Senator John Kerry, Democrat of Massachusetts. Mr. Kerry, the chairman
of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, has frequently served as an envoy to
Pakistan, including after the killing of Osama bin Laden, and was a co-author
of a law that authorized five years and about $7.5 billion of nonmilitary
assistance to Pakistan.]
By Eric Schmitt and David E.
Sanger
WASHINGTON —
The Pentagon quietly notified Congress this month that it would reimburse Pakistan nearly
$700 million for the cost of stationing 140,000 troops on the border with
Afghanistan, an effort to normalize support for the Pakistani military after
nearly two years of crises and mutual retaliation.
The biggest proponent of
putting foreign aid and military reimbursements to Pakistan on a steady footing
is the man President Barack Obama is leaning toward naming as secretary of
state: Senator John Kerry, Democrat of Massachusetts. Mr. Kerry, the chairman
of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, has frequently served as an envoy to
Pakistan, including after the killing of Osama bin Laden, and was a co-author
of a law that authorized five years and about $7.5 billion of nonmilitary
assistance to Pakistan.
The United States also
provides about $2 billion in annual security assistance, roughly half of which
goes to reimburse Pakistan for conducting military operations to fight
terrorism.
Until now, many of these
reimbursements, called coalition support funds, have been held up, in part
because of disputes with Pakistan over the Bin Laden raid, the operations of
the C.I.A., and its decision to block supply lines into Afghanistan last year.
The $688 million payment
— the first since this summer, covering food, ammunition and other expenses
from June through November 2011 — has caused barely a ripple of protest since
it was sent to Capitol Hill on Dec. 7.
The absence of a
reaction, American and Pakistani officials say, underscores how relations
between the two countries have been gradually thawing since Pakistan reopened
the NATO supply routes in July after an apology from the Obama administration
for an errant American airstrike that killed 24 Pakistani soldiers in November
2011.
Mr. Kerry’s nomination
would be welcomed in Pakistan, where he is seen as perhaps the most sympathetic
to Pakistani concerns of any senior lawmaker. He has nurtured relationships
with top civilian and military officials, as well as the I.S.I.,
Pakistan’s most powerful intelligence agency.
But if he becomes
secretary of state, Mr. Kerry will inherit one of the hardest diplomatic tasks
in South Asia: helping Pakistan find a role in steering Afghanistan toward a
political agreement with the Taliban. As the United States, which tried and
failed to broker such an agreement, begins to step back, Pakistan’s role is
increasing.
For a relationship
rocked in the past two years by a C.I.A. contractor’s shooting of two
Pakistanis, the Navy SEAL raid that killed Bin Laden and the accidental
airstrike, perhaps the most remarkable event in recent months has been relative
calm. A senior American official dealing with Pakistan said recently that “this
is the longest we’ve gone in a while without a crisis.”
Sherry Rehman,
Pakistan’s ambassador to the United States, said, “Pakistan-United States
relations are settling down to a more stable trajectory.”
The interlude has
allowed the United States to reduce the huge backlog of NATO supplies at the
border — down to about 3,000 containers from 7,000 when the border crossings
reopened — and to conduct dry runs for the tons of equipment that will flow out
of Afghanistan to Pakistani ports when the American drawdown steps up early
next year.
Moreover, the two sides
have resumed a series of high-level meetings — capped by Secretary of State
Hillary Rodham Clinton’s meeting this month with top Pakistani officials in
Brussels — on a range of topics including counterterrorism, economic
cooperation, energy and the security of Pakistan’s growing nuclear arsenal.
Maleeha Lodhi, a former
Pakistani ambassador to Washington, concurred. “There’s greater convergence
between the two countries than there has been in eight years,” she said. “It’s
been a fairly quick kiss and make up, but it’s been driven by the approaching
urgency of 2014, and by their shared desire for a stable outcome in the
region.”
The one exception to the
state of calm has been a tense set of discussions about Pakistan’s nuclear
arsenal. United States officials have told their Pakistani colleagues that
Islamabad’s move to smaller, more portable weapons creates a greater risk that
one could be stolen or diverted. A delegation of American nuclear experts was
in Pakistan last week, but found that the two countries had fundamentally
divergent views about whether Pakistan’s changes to its arsenal pose a danger.
The greatest progress,
officials say, has been in the relationship between Pakistan and Afghanistan,
after years of mutual recrimination. A high-level Afghan delegation visited
Pakistan in November, resulting in the release of several midlevel Taliban
commanders from Pakistani jails as a sign of good will in restarting the peace
process.
The United States, which
was quietly in the background of those meetings, approved of the release of the
prisoners, but has still held back on releasing five militants from Guantánamo
Bay, Cuba, a key Taliban demand.
One American official
said there was a “big push” to move the talks process forward during the
current winter lull in fighting. The United States is quietly seeking to revive
a peace channel in Qatar, which was frozen earlier this year after the Taliban
refused to participate.
Despite the easing of
tensions in recent months, there are still plenty of sore spots in the
relationship.
Lt. Gen. Michael D.
Barbero, who heads the Pentagon agency responsible for combating roadside
bombs, known as improvised explosive devices, or I.E.D.’s, told a Senate
hearing last week that Pakistan’s efforts to stem the flow of a common
agricultural fertilizer, calcium ammonium nitrate, that Taliban insurgents use
to make roadside bombs had fallen woefully short.
“Our Pakistani partners
can and must do more,” General Barbero told a Senate Foreign Relations
subcommittee hearing.
American officials have
also all but given up on Pakistan’s carrying out a clearing operation in North
Waziristan, a major militant safe haven.
“Pakistan’s continued
acceptance of sanctuaries for Afghan-focused insurgents and failure to
interdict I.E.D. materials and components continue to undermine the security of
Afghanistan and pose an enduring threat to U.S., coalition and Afghan forces,”
a Pentagon report, mandated by Congress, concluded last week.
Declan Walsh contributed reporting from
Islamabad, Pakistan.
@ The New York Times
BILL TOEXPAND BIRTH CONTROL IS APPROVED IN PHILIPPINES
BILL TOEXPAND BIRTH CONTROL IS APPROVED IN PHILIPPINES
[Birth control is legal and widely available in the Philippines for people who can afford it, particularly those living in cities. But condoms, birth control pills and other methods can be difficult to find in rural areas, and their cost puts them out of reach for the very poor.]
By Floyd Whaley
“The people now have the
government on their side as they raise their families in a manner that is just
and empowered,” said Edwin Lacierda, a spokesman for PresidentBenigno S. Aquino III, who pushed for passage.
Each chamber of the national
legislature passed its own version of the measure — by 13 to 8 in the Senate
and 133 to 79 in the House of Representatives — and minor differences between
the two must be reconciled before the measure goes to Mr. Aquino for his
signature.
The measure had been stalled for
more than a decade because of determined opposition from the Roman Catholic Church. Roughly
four-fifths of Filipinos are Catholic.
Birth control is legal and
widely available in the Philippines for people who can afford it,
particularly those living in cities. But condoms, birth control pills
and other methods can be difficult to find in rural areas, and their cost puts
them out of reach for the very poor.
“Some local governments have
passed local ordinances that banned the sale of condoms and contraceptives and forbid
their distribution in government clinics, where most poor Filipinos turn for
health care,” Human Rights Watch said in a statement on the issue, adding that the new bill
would override such ordinances.
The measure passed on Monday
would stock government health centers, including those in remote areas, with
free or subsidized birth control options for the poor. It would require sex education
in public schools and family-planning training for community health officers.
The Philippines has one of the highest birthrates in Asia, but backers of the
legislation, including the Aquino administration, have said repeatedly that its
purpose is not to limit population growth. Rather, they say, the bill is meant
to offer poor families the same reproductive health options that wealthier
people in the country enjoy.
The United Nations Population
Fund estimates that half of the 3.4 million pregnancies in the Philippines each
year are unintended, and that there are 11 pregnancy-related deaths in the
country each day, on average. Most of those could be avoided, the organization
says, through improved maternal health care, a need that proponents say the new
legislation will directly address.
Catholic Church officials took a
hard line against the measure, saying it was out of line with the beliefs of
most religious Filipinos. The church equated contraception with abortion, which is illegal in
the Philippines.
“These artificial means are
fatal to human life, either preventing it from fruition or actually destroying
it,” the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of the
Philippines said in a
statement on the eve of the votes in Congress.
The statement cited health risks
associated with some forms of birth control, but the bishops’ strongest
objections have been lodged on moral rather than medical grounds. In a pastoral letter,
they said: “The youth are being made to believe that sex before marriage is
acceptable, provided you know how to avoid pregnancy. Is this moral? Those who
corrupt the minds of children will invoke divine wrath on themselves.”
The legislation prompted a
heated national debate in the Philippines over the role that government should
play in family planning and women’s health.
“This bill no doubt has inflicted
a very wide chasm of division in our society,” said Juan Ponce Enrile, the
president of the Senate. “Families are even divided, mother and daughter
differing in their views, husband and wife differing in their views.” Mr.
Enrile opposed the bill; his son, Juan, a congressman, voted in favor of it.