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US-Pakistan relations continue to remain strained in the wake of a US strike on the border with Afghanistan which killed two dozen Pakistani soldiers and wounded more than a dozen. The military’s initial reaction included blocking about 50% of all goods from reaching US and NATO troops in Afghanistan through Pakistan, and expelling Americans from CIA bases in Pakistan’s tribal region. US special envoy Marc Grossman, wanting to consult with Pakistan on talks with the Taliban in Qatar, was snubbed last week.

This week Pakistan’s military forcefully rejected a US report on the November 26th air strike, calling it “factually not correct.” The rejection drove a new wedge into relations between the two former allies. Pakistan’s military also authored its own report on the strike, going as far as saying that earlier US reports on border attacks were biased. The New York Times reports that although there is widespread public outrage in Pakistan over the killings, the military’s response in fact, stems from its embarrassment over the American operation that killed Osama bin Laden on Pakistani soil. Meanwhile, the US CIA’s unmanned drone strikes, which were halted in December, resumed this month killing four people in a village in North Waziristan. Pakistan’s parliament is slated to debate its nation’s relationship with the United States particularly over its role in the war in Afghanistan.

Pakistan’s government, however, despite its military’s reluctance, has been making some motions toward normalizing relations with Washington. On Tuesday the US Ambassador in Islamabad, met with Pakistan’s Foreign Ministry. Complicating the matter is the publicizing of a secret memo last November from Pakistan’s former ambassador to the US, delivered to the US by a Pakistani-American millionaire business man and former Fox News analyst named Mansoor Ijaz. The memo in question contained a request on behalf of the Pakistani government to help diminish its military’s strength in exchange for adopting pro-American policies. Ijaz is being summoned to Islamabad this week for a Supreme Court Commission on the matter but is refusing to travel for fear of his safety.

GUEST: Pervez Hoodbhoy, chair of the Department of Physics at Quaid-e-Azam University in Islamabad, frequent political commentator and peace activist

Read the secret memo leaked to Foreign Policy here: http://www.foreignpolicy.com/files/fp_uploaded_documents/111117_Ijaz%20memo%20Foreign%20Policy.PDF