‘Want great relations with Pakistan but can’t as it houses enemies’

US President Trump said on Thursday that he looks forward to meeting Pakistan’s new leadership in the not too distant future but also accused Islamabad of “housing the enemy”, a reference to the presence of Taliban and Haqqani network fighters in the country’s border areas with Afghanistan.

“We want to have a great relationship with Pakistan, but they house the enemy, they take care of the enemy. “We just can’t do that,” the US President said during a cabinet meeting at the White House. “I look forward to meeting with the folks from the new leadership in Pakistan. We’ll be doing that in the nottoo-distant future...”

Trump reminded that it was him who had discontinued the funds given to Pakistan. “A lot of people don’t know that I ended the money given to Pakistan, because they haven’t been fair to us... I ended the $1.3 billion that was paid like it was water...,” he said.

Meanwhile, Pakistan said Trump’s remarks that US wants a ‘great relationship’ with Islamabad signals a departure from his stance taken at the beginning of 2018. “We look forward to positive engagement with the US at the leadership level,” Pakistan foreign office spokesperson Mohammad Faisal said, adding, Pakistan always made positive efforts for peace in Afghanistan.

Bilateral relations between the two countries have been on a downward trend since Trump assumed office in Washington. Last year, on New Year, Trump had stressed that “the United States has foolishly given Pakistan more than $33 billion in aid over the last 15 years” and complained that Islamabad had “given us nothing but lies and deceit, thinking of our leaders as fools”.

Last month, Trump had written to PM Imran Khan seeking Pakistan’s support to advance the Afghan peace process. Despite some efforts to reset troubled ties, the trust deficit between the two countries still keep their relations tense.

With inputs from agencies