LONDON—The timing couldn’t have been worse for Gordon Brown. Just two hours after the Prime Minister had declared Pakistan as central to Britain’s fight against terrorism, the government was told funding for counter-terrorism plans in Pakistan had been cut.
The apparent contradiction on Wednesday also came just days after an offical report had criticised the government as weak and dysfunctional and highlighted the lack of co-ordination between the Prime Minister’s office and the Treasury.
On Thursday the government sought to clarify the issue, but not before the political opposition – confidently ahead in the polls just months from an election – had capitalised on the slip-up.
The counter-terrorism budget for Pakistan will increase overall, confirmed the Foreign Office, but by less than the government had planned, due to the fall in the pound on the international currency markets.
Lady Kinnock appeared to contradict Gordon Brown
Lady Kinnock told the House of Lords on Wednesday that the Foreign Office (FCO) as a whole faced a payment shortfall this year which would get worse in 2010/11.“Programmes in Afghanistan in counter-narcotics have been cut, capacity building to prevent conflicts in Africa, counter-terrorism and radicalisation in Pakistan, the list goes on,” she said.
Only two hours earlier, Gordon Brown had made a statement to the Commons in which he specifically mentioned the Afghanistan Pakistan border areas.
“The action we are taking to counter terrorism at its source in the Afghanistan Pakistan region and elsewhere is a central part of our wider counter-terrorist strategy,” he said.
“Al Qaeda’s affiliates and allies - pushed out of Afghanistan and under increasing pressure in Pakistan - are seeking to exploit other areas with weak governance like parts of Yemen, Somalia and the Sahel.”
Yemen has been highlighted since Umar Farouk Abdul Mutallab, who allegedly tried to detonate explosives on Northwest Flight 253 from Amsterdam to Detroit, revealed he had been strongly influenced by al Qaeda in the Yemen.
Foreign Office Minister Chris Bryant said on Thursday that monies for counter-terrorism (CT) work in Pakistan will go up from £8.2m to £9.5m next year - less than had been planned.
Only just clambering out of recession, Britain is facing years of deep cuts across public services to pay off the vast national debt used to stay afloat in the financial crisis and accumulated over the decade before. Compared to most countries, Britain has been slow to recover from the impact of the crisis that saw the value of the pound drop heavily.
The opposition representative on foreign affairs William Hague said in a statement: “Pakistan has been identified as one of the major sources of the terrorist threat to this country.
“Cutting FCO expenditure on counter-terrorism programmes in Pakistan because of the movement of exchange rates is clearly not the way to run an effective foreign policy.”
Labour MP Kim Howells, chairman of the intelligence and security committee and a former Foreign Office minister, told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme on Thursday: “I don’t think that this immediately is affecting the hard end of our counter-terrorism activities.”
“But undoubtedly what it will affect are those kind of softer, diplomatic efforts and, for example, trying to convince the Pakistani government and the regional governments in Pakistan that they should try to improve the material lives of people, and that will make them less susceptible to the overtures of al-Qaeda and the Taliban, and so on.”
