“The US has not cut [off] any aid to Pakistan. It is has been delayed. Every country has its own system and we want everybody else to appreciate that part of the system.” Pakistani Foreign Minister Hina Rabbani Khar said Saturday at the Grand Hyatt Hotel here after meeting US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.

Pakistan-US relations hit their lowest point when on May 2 this year, a US Joint Special Operations Command force working with the Central Intelligence Agency reportedly killed Osama bin Laden — the alleged mastermind behind the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks in the US — in Abbottabad, Pakistan, near a Pakistani military academy.

Pakistan expressed its anger at the US over the latter’s unilateral mission, calling it a breach of sovereignty.

The US reportedly kept information of the raid secret, mainly over concerns that sympathizers of Islamic militants within Pakistan’s intelligence and military services would have alerted al-Qaeda ahead of the attack, news portal cbsnews.com reported.

The US is also believed to have suspected Pakistan of supplying Taliban and al-Qaeda militants in Afghanistan, where the US is conducting its infamous war.

Following the unilateral raid, Pakistan’s influential military ordered more than 120 American trainers deployed in the country to leave, cbsnews.com reported.

The administration of US President Barack Obama suspended and in some cases canceled up to US$800 million in annual military aid and equipment to Pakistan — more than one-third of the $2 billion earmarked for security assistance annually to the South Asian country, reports said.

Pakistan, as a consequence, has turned to Beijing to compensate for the reduced and suspended military aid from the US.

On Monday, a US House of Representatives’ panel unveiled a bill that would block US aid to Pakistan, Egypt, Lebanon and the Palestinian Authority, the Associated Press reported.

The bill would bar aid to Pakistan unless the secretary of state could certify to Congress that Islamabad was “fully assisting the US with investigating the existence of an official or unofficial support network in Pakistan for Osama bin Laden, including by providing the US with direct access to Osama bin Laden’s relatives in Pakistan and to Osama bin Laden’s former compound in Abottabad”, it reported.

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