As Congress prepares
several ways to challenge U.S. aid funding to
Pakistan following the revelation that Osama
bin Laden had been hiding
there for years, one senior congressman is highlighting
the Pakistan-China relationship as a key reason to distrust Islamabad.
"In 1998 Pakistan's military and intelligence services
facilitated the transfer to Communist China of a Taliban recovered unexploded
American Tomahawk cruise missile, which we fired in an attempt to kill Osama
Bin Laden and members of al-Qaeda. The Communist Chinese reversed engineered
the missile and dissected its components allowing them to learn its
vulnerabilities and defeat its capabilities," stated a May 9 "Dear Colleague"
letter sent to all lawmakers from the office of Rep. Dana Rohrabacher (R-CA), the chairman of the House Foreign Affairs
Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations.
The
title of Rohrabacher's letter reads, "Is Pakistan Planning to Give Our Secret Special
Forces Helicopter to Communist China?"
"Pakistan must immediately return the debris to avoid
compromising American secrets," the letter stated. "If this is not done now it
is probable, given Pakistan's history, that the debris will find its way into
the hands of the Communist Chinese military that is buying, building, and
stealing the necessary military technology to challenge the United States."
The
letter comes at a particularly sensitive time, as over 100 Chinese officials
are in Washington today for the first day of the U.S.-China Security and Economic Dialogue, hosted by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner.
Rohrabacher
has long been critical of the Chinese government. During Chinese President Hu Jintao's visit to Washington in
January, he compared
Chinese officials to Nazis because of their treatment of religious and
ethnic minorities.
On
May 5, Rohrabacher introduced a bill to completely defund U.S. assistance to
Pakistan. As of today, the bill has no co-sponsors.
But
while Rohrabacher's bill may never be passed, his frustration with Pakistan's
handling of nuclear and military technology, including its disbursement of
nuclear technology through the network of scientist A.Q. Khan, is increasingly seen on Capitol Hill as evidence that Pakistan's suspected
harboring of bin Laden is not an isolated incident.
"The Pakistani government has built
and proliferated nuclear weapons and technology around the globe in contradiction
of American security. Yet, the Pakistan government continues to benefit from
huge sums of American cash," his letter stated. "They are laughing at us."
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