US for better military co-operation with India

An amendment titled “to authorise military-to-military exchanges with India” was agreed in the Senate by a voice vote as part of the National Defence Authorisation Act (NDAA)-2017, which Senate passed early this week by an overwhelming bipartisan support of 85-13 votes. 

The Senate bill, as passed, asks the Secretary of Defence to ensure that the India-US co-operation are at a level appropriate to enhance engagement between the militaries of the two countries for developing threat analysis, military doctrine, force planning, logistical support, intelligence collection and analysis, tactics, techniques and procedures and humanitarian assistance and disaster relief. 

The passed legislation says that the Defence Secretary may take “appropriate actions” to ensure exchanges between senior military officers and senior civilian defence officials of the Indian and US Governments. 

It also asked the Defence Secretary to ensure significant enhancement of joint military operations, including maritime security, counter-piracy, counter-terror cooperation, and domain awareness in the Indo-Asia-Pacific region. The House of Representatives has already passed its version of the defence bill, which among other things has approved a bipartisan legislative move to bolster defence relationship with India. It is expected that the two versions of the bill would be merged into one and then would go through the House and Senate for a final approval before it could be sent to President Barack Obama to sign it into law. 

The US Senate has moved to block USD 300 million military aid to Pakistan unless the Defence Secretary certifies that the country is taking demonstrable steps against the dreaded Haqqani Network terror outfit. 

Notably, Defence Secretary Ashton Carter is yet to give the necessary certification to Pakistan for a similar legislation passed by the Congress last year under NDAA-2016. As a result, the Pentagon has not been able to release USD 300 million of Coalition Support Fund (CSF) to Pakistan for the fiscal year 2015-2016 ending September 30 this year. 

However, the Senate version of the NDAA differs with that of the House, which calls for blocking USD 450 million of the USD 900 million US aid to Pakistan in coalition support fund. The Senate version has reduced both the figures respectively to USD 300 million and USD 800 million.