Confident of Pakan’s commitment, ability to secure its nuclear assets, says US

The US is confident of Pakan’s commitment and ability to secure its nuclear assets, the State Department has said, days after President Joe Biden dubbed the country “one of the most dangerous in the world” as it has “nuclear weapons without any cohesion”.
The US has always viewed a secure and prosperous Pakan as critical to US interests, State Department’s Deputy Spokesperson Vedant Patel said on Monday.
Biden’s remarks, made at a Democratic Party congressional campaign committee reception here on Thursday, were rejected Pakan Prime Miner Shehbaz Sharif as “factually incorrect and misleading” as Islamabad summoned the US Ambassador to lodge an official demarche.
“(The US is) confident of Pakan’s commitment and its ability to secure its nuclear assets,” Patel told reporters at a news conference.
“The US has always viewed a secure and prosperous Pakan as critical to US interests. More broadly, the US values our long-standing cooperation with Pakan. We enjoy a strong partnership,” he said.
The State Department, however, refrained from commenting on Biden’s remarks.
“The foreign miner (of Pakan) was in town and had a bilateral meeting with the Secretary not too long ago. Counselor Derek Chollet had the opportunity to visit Karachi and Islamabad not too long ago, I think, on the tail end of the summer, as did USAID Adminrator Sam Power,” Patel said.
“This is a relationship we view as important, and it’s something that we’re going to continue to remain deeply engaged in. And as it relates to the ambassador, we regularly meet with officials at the foreign minry, but I don’t have anything specific to read out,” he said.
A formerly warm relationship between the US and Pakan frayed due to Pakan’s support for the Taliban in Afghanan and the presence of large numbers of Jihadi militants on its soil. Americans have been particularly upset with Pakan since 2011, after al Qaeda founder Osama bin Laden was found and killed there.
After a hiatus of a few years, Pakan and the US have started to re-engage.