Political Quotes

“Thank you, Madam President. I want to thank Senator Corker. The two of us have worked on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee without any partisanship. These are foreign policy issues that require the Senate to work together, and I want to thank Senator Corker for his leadership on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on this issue and on many other issues. Let me first try to explain what we believe will happen in the next 45 minutes. Under the Arms Export Control Act, the sale of military armament to Pakistan requires the administration to give formal notification to the Congress. Prior to that formal notification, there is an informal process where the administration will inform the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and the House Foreign Affairs Committee that they intend to make a sale. They did that in regard to the F-16s for Pakistan, and that is the issue we are talking about. For several months we have been in negotiations with the administration--as well as with stakeholders with regard to the sale of the F-16 to Pakistan--because quite frankly we did have concerns. We had concerns as to how it would impact the region, including India. We had concerns about Pakistan being a nuclear weapons state. We had concerns about Pakistan's efforts for counterinsurgency. We had concerns about Pakistan's participation in the peace process with Afghanistan. All of those are issues we were able to get some discussions on and we think some progress to the F-16 sale.…”