Please respect FT.com's ts&cs and copyright policy which allow you to: share links; copy content for personal use; & redistribute limited extracts. Email ftsales.support@ft.com to buy additional rights or use this link to reference the article Many members of Congress have suggested it was inconceivable that Pakistani officials did not know the al-Qaeda leader was on Pakistani soil, and have argued that the roughly $3bn a year Islamabad gets from the US a year was not well spent.
“I emphasised to our Pakistani friends – and they are friends – that many in Congress are raising tough questions about our ongoing economic assistance to the government of Pakistan because of the events as they unfolded, and because of the presence of Osama bin Laden in Pakistan,” Mr Kerry said.
At the same time, Pakistani legislators have expressed deep anger at the US Navy Seals strike in Abbottabad, a military town, and have suggested that Pakistan’s vital logistical support for the Afghanistan war could be thrown into question.
Because 40 per cent of supplies for the Afghan war effort go through Pakistan, US officials argue that scope for reducing US aid for Islamabad is limited, because of the risk that Pakistan could cut off transit routes in retaliation.
The US is also seeking to maintain good relations with Pakistan because of the country’s status as a nuclear weapons state outside the non-proliferation treaty.
The Institute for Science and International Security, a Washington-based think-tank, said on Monday that Islamabad was ramping up its nuclear weapons programme with three new reactors that would “roughly double Pakistan’s annual ability to build nuclear weapons to about 19-26 nuclear weapons per year”.
ISIS and other groups are particularly worried about the safety of weapons-grade nuclear materials kept in Pakistani laboratories.
A joint statement agreed by Mr Kerry and the Pakistani government struck a note of harmony and said the two countries would work together in any future action against “high value targets” – in contrast to the Abbottabad raid.
But Congressional officials made clear that Mr Kerry was speaking only on his own behalf. Barack Obama won the US presidency promising he would take action against al-Qaeda targets if Pakistan was unwilling to do so – and US officials have said they did not tell Pakistan of the raid for fear the extremist group could have been tipped off.
Mr Kerry added that Pakistan had agreed to hand over the wreckage of a US Blackhawk helicopter destroyed during the raid.
Some western officials had feared that Pakistan might pass the wreckage on to China, to allow Beijing an insight into US stealth technology.
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