ISLAMABAD — Pakistan's most politically important province, Punjab,
will cancel four aid agreements with United states in protest at
continued US drone strikes in the country, a senior official said on
Friday.
The US strikes doubled last year, with more than 100 such
operations killing over 670 people, according to an AFP tally, and the
CIA has said the covert programme has severely disrupted Al-Qaeda's
leadership.
"The Punjab government has decided in principle to
cancel four memorandums of understanding (MOUs) with the US in protest
against the drone strikes," a senior provincial government official
told AFP on condition of anonymity.
He said that the provincial
government had signed the MOUs, worth 20 billion rupees ($232 million),
with USAID in the areas of education, health and solid waste management.
"These
projects were to be completed in three years," he said, adding that
Punjab government would now fund them to ensure they were carried out
according to the timetable.
"We will now finance them from our
own resources," the official said, adding that other spending would be
cut and tax collection efficiency improved to make up for the lost
funding.
"Our government would not like the US to keep violating our sovereignty in return for the aid."
He
said that the government would also reconsider other US-funded aid
projects, but did not give their number or the total amount of money
involved.
When asked if the US government had officially been
informed about the cancellation of the agreements, he said: "It will be
done pretty soon."
US embassy spokesman Alberto Rodriguez said
there had been "no official notification" of any decision to scrap US
aid projects in Punjab.
"There are a lot of projects that they have ongoing in Punjab," he told AFP.
The
official's comments came shortly after a US drone strike killed four
militants in the North Waziristan tribal region on Friday.
The
strikes inflame anti-American feeling in Pakistan, which worsened after
the US raid that killed Osama bin Laden in the northwestern town of
Abbottabad on May 2.
Pakistan's civilian and military leaders
were left angry and embarrassed by the unilateral US raid that
discovered and killed Al-Qaeda's chief living, possibly for years, two
hours' drive from the Pakistani capital.
It rocked the country's
seemingly powerful security establishment, with its intelligence
services and military widely accused of incompetence or complicity over
bin Laden's presence.
Pakistan's parliament demanded no repeat of
the raid, although US President Barack Obama has reserved the right to
act again, and Islamabad insisted US drone strikes targeting Taliban
and Al-Qaeda leaders on its territory must end.
The military
threatened to review intelligence cooperation in the war on Al-Qaeda
and Islamabad called the raid "unauthorised unilateral action". AFP
