Dealing Honorably With Pakistan : A good guy never says ‘no sale’ after he’s been paid for the merchandise

In 1988 the United States agreed to sell Pakistan more than $1 billion in military equipment, including 28 F-16 fighters. But two years later the deal was suspended when President George Bush’s Administration was unable to certify to Congress that Pakistan wasn’t pursuing a nuclear weapons program. Under terms of a 1985 law known as the Pressler Amendment, after Sen. Larry Pressler (R-S.D.), no arms sales or economic aid are allowed to countries suspected of developing nuclear weapons. That might have been that--except Pakistan had already paid for the F-16s. Not unreasonably, Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto told President Clinton the other day her country wants either the planes or its money back. Clinton, however, is powerless to make any decision about that on his own.

What he can do is send the issue back to Congress. He can ask for a waiver to allow delivery of the planes. To do that, however, would be to undercut his own policy of using economic, political and military leverage to discourage nuclear proliferation. He can ask reimbursement for Pakistan. The problem here is that the planes’ manufacturer has long since been paid off, and Congress is unlikely to appropriate the money needed to pay Pakistan back. He can, at a minimum, propose that the United States take over or share the $50,000 a year it costs Pakistan to store each of the planes in the Arizona desert. But approval even for that seems problematical.

U.S. relations with Pakistan have grown rocky as the relevance has gone out of their expedient Cold War alliance. Worried about rival India’s nuclear weapons program, Pakistan has covertly pursued its own and now has what it calls the “capability” for making weapons. A strongly anti-Western and often violent Islamic radicalism looms as a threat to the country’s stability. In these circumstances, helping to arm Pakistan doesn’t make a lot of sense. But simply keeping Pakistan’s money is not an honorable course either. Probably the best thing is to try to sell those aging F-16s in Arizona to a friendly third country, pay off Pakistan and so at least remove one irritant in a relationship that, unhappily, could be headed for more than a few others.