Screengrab of U.S. State Department Principal Deputy spokesperson Vedant Patel addressing a press briefing
The U.S. State Department on Thursday reiterated that Pakistan one of Washington’s “most important partners” in the region, while rubbing the impression of tensions between the two due to recent sanctions imposed on companies allegedly supplying missile components to Islamabad.
“Absolutely not,” responded State Department spokesperson Vedant Patel to a question on whether there was “something going on” between Islamabad and Washington. “Pakistan continues to be one of our most important partners in the region. There continues to be a lot of cooperation that we have with the Government of Pakistan, especially in the security space, especially in the trade sector,” he added.
Referring to recent talks between Finance Minister Muhammad Aurangzeb and members of the State Department, the spokesperson said ties between the two states were “robust” and the U.S. would “look to continue strengthening it.”
Last week, the Biden administration imposed sanctions on three Chinese and one Belarusian companies for allegedly supplying dual-use components for Pakistan’s missile program, a charge Islamabad rejected as incorrect. Subsequently, Patel clarified the sanctions were imposed because these entities were “proliferators of weapons of mass destruction and the means of their delivery.”
Separately, Pakistan’s Foreign Office on Thursday dismissed an assessment on the country’s human rights situation in a recent U.S. State Department Human Rights Report as “unfair and politically motivated.” It also criticized the report for lacking objectivity.
In its 2023 U.S. Human Rights Report on Pakistan, the State Department said there were no notable improvements to addressing human rights violations and raised various concerns, including unlawful killings, enforced disappearances, torture, harsh prison conditions, arbitrary arrests and a lack of fair public trials.
“The U.S. State Department’s annual exercises of preparing such unsolicited reports lack objectivity and remain inherently flawed in their methodology,” read the Foreign Office rejoinder. “These reports use domestic social lens to judge human rights in other countries in a politically biased manner,” it said, pointing to “double standards” and arguing such attitudes undermined the discourse on international human rights.
“It is deeply concerning that a report purported to highlight human rights situations around the world ignores or downplays the most urgent hotspots of gross human rights violations such as in Gaza and Indian Occupied Jammu and Kashmir,” it said.