WASHINGTON/ISLAMABAD — The United States accused Pakistan on Tuesday of playing a "double game" on fighting terrorism and warned Islamabad it would have to do more if it wanted to maintain U.S. aid.
"They can do more to stop terrorism and we want them to do that," White House spokeswoman Sarah Sanders told reporters.
The White House said it would likely announce actions to pressure Pakistan within days, shortly after U.S. Ambassador Nikki Haley said at the United Nations that Washington would withhold $255 million in assistance to Pakistan.
"There are clear reasons for this. Pakistan has played a double game for years," Haley told reporters. "They work with us at times, and they also harbor the terrorists that attack our troops in Afghanistan.
"That game is not acceptable to this administration. We expect far more cooperation from Pakistan in the fight against terrorism."
The comments followed an angry tweet from President Donald Trump on Monday that the United States had been rewarded with "nothing but lies and deceit" for "foolishly" giving Pakistan more than $33 billion in aid in the last 15 years.
"They give safe haven to the terrorists we hunt in Afghanistan, with little help. No more!" he tweeted.
Pakistan civilian and military chiefs on Tuesday rejected "incomprehensible" U.S. comments and summoned American Ambassador David Hale to explain Trump's tweet.
Relations with Washington have been strained for years over Islamabad's alleged support for Haqqani network militants, who are allied with the Afghan Taliban.
The United States also alleges that senior Afghan Taliban commanders live on Pakistani soil, and has signaled it will cut aid and take other steps if Islamabad does not stop helping or turning a blind eye to Haqqani militants crossing the border to carry out attacks in Afghanistan.
Related: Trump threatens to cut Pakistan aid, says it harbors terrorists
In 2016, Taliban leader Mullah Mansour was killed by a U.S. drone strike inside Pakistan and in 2011, al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden was found and killed by U.S. troops in the garrison town of Abbottabad.
At the State Department on Tuesday, spokesman Heather Nauert said Pakistan knows what it needs to do, including taking action against the Haqqani network and other militants.
Pakistan needs to "earn, essentially, the money that we have provided in the past in foreign military assistance," she said.
Islamabad bristles at the suggestion it is not doing enough to fight militants, noting that its casualties at the hands of Islamists since 2001 number in the tens of thousands.
Pakistani Prime Minister Shahid Khaqan Abbasi on Tuesday chaired a National Security Committee meeting of civilian and military chiefs, focusing on Trump's tweet. The meeting, which lasted nearly three hours, was brought forward by a day and followed an earlier meeting of army generals.
The committee, in a statement issued by the prime minister's office, did not name Trump but spoke of "deep disappointment" at a slew of critical comments coming from U.S. officials over the past few months.
"Recent statements and articulation by the American leadership were completely incomprehensible as they contradicted facts manifestly, struck with great insensitivity at the trust between two nations built over generations, and negated the decades of sacrifices made by the Pakistani nation," it said.
On Tuesday evening, Trump tweeted again about Pakistan, but also lashed out similarly at Palestinians, saying: "It's not only Pakistan that we pay billions of dollars to for nothing, but also many other countries, and others. As an example, we pay the Palestinians HUNDRED OF MILLIONS OF DOLLARS a year and get no appreciation or respect. They don’t even want to negotiate a long overdue... ...peace treaty with Israel. We have taken Jerusalem, the toughest part of the negotiation, off the table, but Israel, for that, would have had to pay more. But with the Palestinians no longer willing to talk peace, why should we make any of these massive future payments to them?"
