As Rift Deepens, Kerry Has a Warning for Pakistan

 

The United States has increased drone strikes in Pakistan’s tribal areas in the past 10 days in an effort to exploit the uncertainty and disarray among militant ranks caused by Bin Laden’s death on May 2. The latest airstrikes, on Friday, occurred as Pakistan’s spy chief, Lt. Gen. Ahmed Shuja Pasha, in a rare appearance before the nation’s Parliament, denounced the American raid as a “sting operation.”

Parliament then passed a resolution declaring that the drone strikes were a violation of sovereignty equivalent to the secret attack on Bin Laden’s compound in Abbottabad. The lawmakers warned that Pakistan could cut the supply lines to American forces in Afghanistan if there were more such attacks. The resolution contained no condemnation of a splinter group of the Pakistani Taliban, who killed more than 80 Pakistani paramilitary cadets on Friday.

Pakistan stepped up its condemnations of the United States as Senator John Kerry, Democrat of Massachusetts, the chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee and a longtime emissary to Pakistan in times of crisis, was preparing to land in Islamabad. He was arriving with a list of actions — and some offers from Washington to ease tensions — that he finalized in meetings with Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, the national security adviser, Thomas E. Donilon, and other top American security officials.

A senior administration official said Saturday that the United States would try to use the threat of Congressional cuts to the $3 billion in annual American aid to Pakistan as leverage. Any evidence of Pakistan’s complicity in sheltering Bin Laden — culled from the hundreds of computer flash drives and documents recovered in the raid — could also be used, the official said. So far, no such evidence has been found.

“In the Congress, this is a make-or-break moment” for aid to Pakistan, Mr. Kerry said in an interview just before he left for Afghanistan and Pakistan. Mr. Kerry said he would tell Pakistan that there needed to be “a real demonstration of commitment” to fighting terrorist groups in the next few months. But he will also reassure Pakistani officials that they will be a central part of any political accord with the Taliban in Afghanistan, to ease their fears that India will take over large areas of Afghanistan as the United States pulls out.

The Obama administration has said nothing about the Pakistani government’s criticisms, in the hope that they are designed to alleviate public anger and the Pakistani military’s embarrassment that American forces attacked the Bin Laden compound without being detected. Mr. Donilon and other senior administration officials declined to be interviewed about the administration’s strategy.

The American reticence stems in part from the reality that such ultimatums have been sent before — most recently after the arrest of Raymond Davis, a Central Intelligence Agency contractor who shot two Pakistanis during what he said was a robbery. Pakistan has repeatedly called the administration’s bluff and revealed the threats as hollow. The United States relies heavily on transit routes in Pakistan to supply American troops in Afghanistan, and any move to cut off aid would probably lead Pakistan to close the supply routes, as it has done during previous disputes.

Mr. Kerry is arriving at the moment of highest tension between the two countries since Pakistan, given little choice, formally broke with the Taliban and allied with the United States just after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. Mr. Kerry said both countries must make “fundamental choices” about their relationship.

“I have had some of these conversations with Pakistan before,” he said, “but never in the context of the world’s No. 1 terrorist being found 35 miles from the capital, next door to Pakistan’s West Point, and with the discovery he was fully, fully operational.”