President Barack Obama will meet with visiting Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif this week, a move which signals the thawing relations between the two countries, Reuters reported Sunday.Warren Strobel writes the summit Wednesday is a culmination of months of activity to restart U.S. security assistance halted in 2011 after Navy SEALs killed al Qaeda chief Osama bin Laden on Pakistani soil.
Sharif will also visit lawmakers on Capitol Hill to talk about freeing up counterinsurgency aid among the agenda, the report quoted a congressional staffer as saying.
“As part of our annual funding process, throughout the course of this past summer the State Department notified Congress of how it planned to program funds from several different accounts for various programs in Pakistan,” State Department spokeswoman Marie Harf said in an email.
“While this is part of a long process of restarting security assistance cooperation after implementation was slowed during the bilateral challenges of 2011 and 2012, civilian assistance has continued uninterrupted throughout,” she added.
According to the article, Obama has requested $1.162 billion in aid for Pakistan for FY 2014.
