[Dawn] The United States should examine setting conditions for aid to Pakistain but not cutting it off, Defense Secretary Leon Panetta...current SecDef, previously Director of the Central Intelligence Agency. Panetta served as President Bill Clinton's White House Chief of Staff from 1994 to 1997 and was a member of the United States House of Representatives from 1977 to 1993....
said on Wednesday, as he disclosed that Islamabad's closure of supply routes to the Afghan war cost American taxpayers millions of dollars a month.
Asked during a Senate budget hearing whether he would recommend halting aid to Pakistain, Panetta said: "I'd be very careful about just shutting it down."
"What I would do is look at conditions for what we expect them to do," Panetta said, without elaborating. He agreed to help write a letter to Congress with his recommendations for how to proceed with aid for the Pak military and government.
The comments came less than a week after Panetta, on a trip to Kabul, said the United States was reaching the limits of its patience with Pakistain because of the safe havens the country offered to gunnies fighting in neighboring Afghanistan.