[Al Jazeera] The United States will cut off aid to several Mighty Pak Army units believed to have killed civilians and unarmed prisoners, according to reports.The New York Times and Guardian newspapers said that some US-backed Mighty Pak Army and special operations troops who have been in action against Taliban fighters in Swat Valley and South Wazoo along the border region with Afghanistan, will be affected by the decision.
The reports come as the US government is laying out a new multibillion-dollar military aid package for Pakistain, as it presses the Islamabad government to step up the fight against al-Qaeda and the Taliban there.
Washington officials told The News Agency that Dare Not be Named news agency that Hillary Clinton, the US secretary of state, and Shah Mehmood
WormtongueQureshi, the Pak foreign minister, were expected to unveil the package on Friday, at the end of the latest round of high-level US-Pak strategic talks there.
'Real concerns'
The move to cut off some funding would be in line with a law known as the Leahy Amendment, which requires the US to stop aid to foreign military units found to have committed gross human rights
... which are not the same thing as individual rights, mind you...
violations.
"I told the White House that I have real concerns about the Pak military's actions, and I'm not going to close my eyes to it because of our national interests in Pakistain," Senator Patrick Leahy, the amendment's author, told the New York Times.
"What's our national interest mean to me? Nuttin'!"
Last month, Washington asked Pakistain for an explanation about a video purporting to show Pak troops executing bound and blindfolded young men.
Human Rights Watch said it briefed the US state department and congressional officials earlier this year about evidence of more than 200 extrajudicial killings of suspected Taliban sympathisers.
The heart [urp!] bleeds.
Those killings were said to have taken place in the Swat Valley, the home to about 1.3 million people and the site of a Pak military operation last year to take back the former Taliban stronghold.
Units from Indonesia and Colombia have been affected by the amendment in the past, but this would be the first time it would hit a country of such strategic importance as Pakistain.
A senior Pak official involved in discussions about the matter told the newspaper that the United States had expressed concern about reports of hundreds of extrajudicial killings committed by the Pak military.
Pakistain inquiry
Pakistain was addressing the issue, he said. But the official noted that so far, the US government "has not threatened us with withholding of assistance or training for any of our military units on these grounds".
Al Jizz's Kamal Hyder, reporting from Islamabad, said the allegations will not affect the broader co-operation between the two countries.
"As far as allegations are concerned the Pakistain military chief said an inquiry would be appointed. The accusations have been there for quite a while," he said. "The videos that have emerged [recently] are very grainy and possibly show Pak military soldiers [carrying out abuses] but the big question mark was if there were executions, if the Paks wanted to conceal it, why are they being filmed?"
"So really, there's insufficient evidence, isn't there?"
Except for the film of course, but it's very grainy ...
"At the same time as this is going on there is a realisation in Washington that any solution to the Afghan problem must have Pakistain on board ... unfortunately Pakistain has been marginalised as far as talks with the Taliban are concerned.
"Both countries have their reservations [about the third round of strategic dialogue between Pakistain and US] and obviously this amendment is going to figure prominently in those talks."
The aid cuts were just the latest in a series of developments highlighting the uneasy relationship between Washington and Pakistain, which the US sometimes sees as hindering the fight against al-Qaeda.
It comes as the two nations seek to smooth over their latest crisis after Nato helicopters killed Pak troops along the Afghanistan-Pakistain border and Islamabad responded by blocking the main transit point for US war supplies.
Pakistain receives about $2bn in US aid for its military each year.