Should a Friend in Need Be a Friend in Deed?

Few nations have received as much U.S. aid in recent years as has Pakistan--and few have used it so well. Since 1952, some $3.2 billion in cash grants, loans and food have gone into everything from villages and power grids to harbors and hospitals, not to mention another $1.5 billion to modernize the military. So efficiently have the Pakistanis employed their aid to reach a healthy 6% economic growth rate that economists have begun to refer to the "Pakistan example" as a measure of achievement for underdeveloped nations.

Nevertheless, further U.S. assistance to Pakistan hung in the balance last week. The reason dates back to 1962, when the U.S. first began pumping military assistance to Pakistan's old enemy India, which faced invasion across the Himalayas by Red China. Pakistan's President Mohammed Ayub Khan, already interested in the nonalignment game, found U.S. aid to India reason to move more swiftly onto a path of warmer relations with Peking, and more recently, Moscow. Ayub's government-controlled press has also been a consistent critic of U.S. policy in Viet Nam, which no doubt influenced President Johnson's decision to withdraw his invitation to the Pakistani leader to visit the U.S. last April.

Early this month Washington increased the pressure with a diplomatic note advising Ayub that the next meeting of the aid consortium of the U.S. and eight other nations that had promised Pakistan a fresh $500 million had been postponed from July 27 until Sept. 27. The message suggested that the interval thus created might be useful for ironing out U.S.-Pakistani differences.

In Rawalpindi last week, Pakistan's Foreign Minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto read the U.S. note to the National Assembly. The result, predictably, was outrage and indignation. "If we are not going to be ruled from No. 10 Downing Street," said another, "then, by God, we are not going to be ruled by Wall Street." Next day Ayub himself took up the cry: "If friendship impinges on the sovereignty and independence of our country and is against our interests, we no longer desire such friendship."

Once Pakistani tempers cooled, negotiations could continue. For the moment, Pakistan was suffering an acute case of hurt pride, and as one U.S. official admitted ruefully, "This is the worst our relations have ever been."

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