Two senior Republican senators expressed unease on Wednesday about what was being accomplished by US policy in Afghanistan and Pakistan, saying matters were drifting and disheartening.
Senators Richard Lugar and Bob Corker appeared to be warning of growing doubts among lawmakers about US efforts in the Afghanistan-Pakistan region, where Washington is waging a bloody war in one country and struggling to get full co-operation against militants in another.
"I just sense a drift with regards to the Afghanistan situation, with regard to Pakistan," said Lugar, the leading Republican on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. Corker, who recently travelled to the area, said at a hearing of the committee that "in order to maintain appropriate relations, I will not publicly articulate my feelings after meeting with the leaders" in Pakistan. But he added Pakistan was "the most disheartening place in the world to be, when you are talking about the type of relationship that we have."
US-Pakistani ties, long strained over complaints that Pakistan has not done enough to go after militants launching attacks on US troops in Afghanistan, have reached a nadir as Washington pushes for the release of a US intelligence contractor locked in a Pakistani jail.
The fate of Raymond Davis, a CIA contractor who worked at the US consulate in Lahore and is charged with killing two men last month in what he said was an attempted robbery, has thrown billions of dollars in US military and civilian aid to Pakistan into jeopardy. Corker said the relationship was basically "transactional," but "our side of the transaction is the only side that to me is being fulfilled.
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