Pakistan summons top US diplomat in Islamabad after Trump-Khan spat over bin Laden & aid
The Pakistani Foreign Ministry has summoned US Chargé d'Affaires Paul Jones to protest against accusations by Donald Trump, who earlier bashed the country for allegedly failing to do enough to justify getting US military aid.
The Foreign Ministry said it wanted to confront the US diplomat “to register a strong protest on the unwarranted and unsubstantiated allegations made against Pakistan.”
Over the past several days, Trump lashed out at Pakistan on his Twitter account and in a Fox News interview, saying Pakistan was not doing enough to support the US fight against the Taliban and accusing it of secretly protecting terrorist leader Osama bin Laden. He threatened to end US military aid to Islamabad, which he has already cut this year.
The rhetoric angered many Pakistanis, including Prime Minister Imran Khan, who said few American allies sacrificed as much as Pakistan did while supporting the fight against terrorism.
The ministry’s statement rejected the claim that Pakistan was somehow protecting Osama bin Laden, saying “that it was Pakistan’s intelligence cooperation that provided the initial evidence to trace the whereabouts of OBL”. It called Trump’s allegations “baseless” and “totally unacceptable.”
Trump is well-known for his habit of threatening countries, which he perceives as abusing American generosity. He repeatedly accused European NATO allies of being freeloaders due to their failure to meet the bloc’s defense spending benchmarks. Latin American nations like Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador got similar treatment due to a failure to stop the so-called caravan of people seeking to cross into the US and seek asylum there.
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