Secretary of state Hillary Clinton is said to have informed Congress, which has mandated the restriction subject to a national security waiver, that she is setting aside legal restrictions that would have blocked the $2 billion in US economic and military assistance. The waiver is evidently linked to securing Pakistan's cooperation in the upcoming US withdrawal from Afghanistan and preventing all all-out civil war in the country once the US leaves. A blunt way of putting it would be the US is trying to buy peace in the region on its way out while Pakistan is blackmailing Washington with its ability to create trouble in the land-locked country. According to the latest report, Clinton, in her September 13 message to Congress, said she is waiving provisions of the 2009 Enhanced Partnership with Pakistan Act (EPPA) and the state department's 2012 budget requiring that she certify that Islamabad has met certain conditions before the $2 billion in economic, military and counter-terrorism assistance can be disbursed. The wording of the legislation, while not mentioning India, makes it implicitly clear that Pakistan has to cease using terrorism against its neighbors. Clinton's waiver suggests it has not.
But despite the enormous mistrust between the two sides, mostly engendered by the Pakistani military-security-intelligence establishment, both governments appear to be striving to bring ties back on the rails, at least on the civilian side, even as Pakistan's military establishment is reaching out to Moscow.
On Friday, Washington hosted a meeting of the law enforcement and counterterrorism working group aimed at disrupting illicit networks in Pakistan that supply the components and financing for improvised explosive devices (IEDs). Pakistan's interior minister Rehman Malik was told of "the danger these devices pose to Pakistan as well as Afghan, US, and coalition forces working to establish stability and security in Afghanistan." While the usual commitments were made to address such issues, US concerns center around whether the Pakistani civilian establishment has the wherewithal to deliver on its pledges at a time the country's military has embarked on a path of courtship of Russia. While Rehman was visiting Washington, the country's military strongman Pervez Ashfaq Kayani, was on a four-day visit to Moscow, after several attempts to schedule a visit to the US had failed.