The US State Department has said that it doesn't have "anything to offer" in response to a question on strained relations between India and Pakistan, which have been affected by New Delhi's ongoing concerns around cross-border terrorism and the Jammu and Kashmir issue.
"We would hope that any country on the face of the planet condemns terrorism anywhere, but ultimately this is between India and Pakistan. Broadly, of course, we welcome any countries making more positive relations with their neighbors. But as it relates to this specifically, I just – I don’t have anything to offer," the US State Department spokesperson Vedant Patel told a briefing in Washington DC on Monday.
The response came in after a scribe referred the US official to Prime Minister Narendra Modi's position of "terrorism and talks" not going together at the same time between the two Subcontinental neighbours.
The US State Department statement also comes against the backdrop of India's concerns around US-Pakistan defence relationship, which both the capitals maintain is focussed on counter-terrorism efforts at the Afghanistan-Pakistan border.
Meanwhile, in February, the External Affairs (EAM) S. Jaishankar told the Munich Security Conference that the West has for decades preferred supplying arms not to India, but to its neighbouring country.
Additionally, citing India's strong defence relationship with Russia, which has been targeted by the western allies in the wake of the Ukraine conflict, Jaishankar had said back in October 2022 during a visit to Canberra that both countries maintain strong cooperation for decades.
"The West supplied weapons to Pakistan for years and not to India for years. And now they are asking India to stop buying Russian weapons, when Moscow stood by New Delhi all those years in the past," Jaishankar stressed.
In September 2022, Jaishankar and Defence Minister Rajnath Singh had strongly protested the Biden administration's decision to resume Foreign Military Sales (FMS) to Pakistan for maintaining the state Air Force's (PAF) F-16 fighter jet fleet.
The previous Trump administration had suspended American military aid to Pakistan, which ran into billions of dollars, over Islamabad's perceived double-standards on terrorism and its apparent support to the Taliban* during the War on Terror.
Islamabad was also designated as a major non-NATO ally by the US during the War on Terror. During the Cold War, Pakistan was a formal ally of the US under then Southeast Asia Treaty Organisation (SEATO).
"For someone to say, I am doing this because it is all counter-terrorism content and so when you are talking of an aircraft like a capability of an F-16 where everybody knows, you know where they are deployed. You are not fooling anybody by saying these things," Jaishankar had said during an official visit to Washington DC in September 2022.
*under UN sanctions