White House review faults Pakistan policy

WASHINGTON, Dec. 7 (UPI) -- A U.S. Bush administration assessment of Afghanistan to be given to the next president tacitly acknowledges its Pakistan strategy has failed, sources say.

One of the options it lays out for President-elect Barack Obama is to make the massive amounts of U.S. military aid to Pakistan contingent on its use to fight Taliban militants on its Afghanistan border, rather than diverting it for possible use against India, unnamed sources told Sunday's New York Times.

The White House report, which was compiled beginning in mid-September, determined Pakistan had diverted $10 billion in U.S. aid meant to help in Afghanistan efforts to its border with India, the Times said.

"We've gone seven long years proclaiming that Pakistan was an ally and that it was doing everything we asked in the war on terror," one senior official involved in drafting the report told the Times. "And the truth is that $10 billion later, they still don't have the basic capacity for counterinsurgency operations. What we are telling Obama and his people is that has to be reversed."

"We are concluding our review," said White House spokesman Gordon Johndroe. "We intend to pass it to the new team."