The Bush administration plans to shift nearly $230 million in aid to Pakistan from counterterrorism programmes to upgrading that country’s aging F-16 attack planes, which Pakistan prizes more for their contribution to its military rivalry with India than for fighting insurgents along its Afghan border.

Some members of the US Congress have greeted the proposal with dismay and anger, and may block the move. Lawmakers and their aides say that F-16s do not help the counter-terrorism campaign and defy the administration’s urgings that Pakistan increase pressure on fighters of al-Qaeda and the Taliban in its tribal areas.

The timing of the action caught lawmakers off guard, prompting some of them to suspect the deal was meant to curry favour with Pakistani Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gilani, who will meet President Bush next week, and to ease tensions over the 11 members of the Pakistani paramilitary forces killed in an American airstrike along the Afghan border last month.

The financing for the F-16s would represent more than two-thirds of the $300 million that Pakistan will receive this year in American military financing for equipment and training.

Last year, the Congress specified that those funds be used for law enforcement or counter-terrorism. Pakistan’s military has rarely used its current fleet of F-16s, which were built in the 1980s, for close-air support of counter-terrorism missions, largely because the risks of civilian casualties would inflame anti-Government sentiments in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas.

State Department officials say the upgrades would greatly enhance the F-16s’ ability to strike insurgents accurately, while reducing the risk to civilians. The officials said the timing was driven by deadlines of the American contractor, Lockheed Martin.

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