How US will punish Pak troops for abusing prisoners

The US will invoke the Leahy Amendment, which requires it to cut off aid to foreign military units found to have committed gross human rights violations

In an embarrassment to Pakistan, the United States has decided not to train or equip about a half dozen Pakistani Army units that are believed to have killed unarmed prisoners and civilians during recent offensives against the Taliban, a media report said today.

The White House has not yet informed Pakistan of its decision even though senior Pakistani officials are here for a series of talks this week, The New York Times reported. The move, latest in a series of developments  highlighting the uneasy relationship between US and Pakistan, comes just as the two countries are trying to get beyond a sharp exchange after NATO helicopter gunships killed three Pakistani soldiers, and Islamabad retaliated by shutting down a critical allied supply route into Afghanistan.

US President Barack Obama's administration has, "a lot of concern about not embarrassing" the Pakistani military, a senior official was quoted as saying by the paper. Some US-backed Pakistani Army and special operations troops who have been in action against Taliban fighters in the Swat Valley and South Waziristan along the lawless border region will be affected by the decision, the newspaper said.

The move would be in line with a law known as the Leahy Amendment, which requires the US  to cut off aid to foreign military units found to have committed gross human rights violations. It has been applied in the past to Indonesia and Colombia, but never to a country of such strategic importance to the United States as Pakistan.

"I told the White House that I have real concerns about the Pakistani  military's actions, and I'm not going to close my eyes to it because of our national interests in Pakistan," the amendment's author Senator Patrick Leahy told the Times.

US had expressed concern about reports of hundreds of extra judicial killings committed by the Pakistani military, a senior Pakistani official involved in discussions about the matter told the newspaper. Pakistan 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."

The US spends about USD 2 billion a year on the Pakistani military, including money specifically designated for counter terrorism operations.