Pakistan has urged Washington to  restore military financing and sales suspended by the Trump administration as a senior US official acknowledged the importance of this bilateral relationship in a key strategic region, media reports said.

“It is important that the US restores — for Pakistan — Foreign Military Financing and Foreign Military Sales, suspended by the previous administration,” Masood Khan, Pakistan’s envoy in Washington, was quoted as saying by Dawn News at a seminar in Washington.

US Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for South and Central Asia, Elizabeth Horst, however, focused on the need to help rebuild the troubled Pakistani economy and urged Islamabad to work with the International Monetary Fund (IMF) to do so.

“The reforms that Pakistan and the IMF agreed to are not easy,” she said. “But it’s crucial that Pakistan take these actions to bring the country back to sound financial footing, avoid falling into further debt, and grow Pakistan’s economy.”

Since the US withdrawal from Afghanistan, the US-Pakistan relationship has been stuck in a prolonged period of uncertainty. Intensified US competition with China has further strained Pakistan’s relations with the United States, as did the country’s deteriorating economy, reports Dawn News.