Lockheed gets contract to sell F-16s to Pakistan

Washington—The US Defence Department has awarded a $498.2 million contract to Lockheed Martin Corp to supply 18 F-16 aircraft to Pakistan just ten days after the US Congress slapped restrictions on military aid to Islamabad. Lockheed will sell 12 F-16C plus six F-16D planes to Pakistan under the contract, the department announced in a list of defence contract awards Monday, but did not say how soon the fighter jets would be delivered.
The award to Lockheed is in line with a senior US official’s assertion that the Congressional restrictions on providing $50 million in military aid to Pakistan would not affect the sales of F-16 aircraft. “The F-16 programme is a Pakistani purchase, their money, they’re buying them. And our foreign military finance, our military assistance goes for different purposes and is not involved at this point in the F-16 sales,” said Richard Boucher, assistant secretary of state for South and Central Asian affairs.
“So they will be able to continue that and we will be able to continue our efforts...so they can do the fight against terrorism that they are in,” he said in a media teleconference last month shortly after Congress linked the military aid to Islamabad’s efforts to fight terror. Boucher had also expressed confidence that the restrictions would not prevent the Bush administration from providing military aid to Pakistan, which has received about $10 billion in US funding since 2001.—Agencies