Washington: The United States has said that the $ three billion security and economic aid that President George W Bush has pledged to Pakistan does not include any provision to supply new F-16 fighter jets to Islamabad although it could consider "upgrading" the ones it has.

A senior administration official told reporters after President Bush and Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf's meeting at Camp David on June 24 that "the President announced that we would not be providing new F-16s under this programme."

He, however, added that the US is "perfectly willing to consider upgrading the F-16s" Pakistan now has: "Pakistan has many many defence needs that need meeting. We're going to be working with them. I think they are going to come up with some requests, for example, upgrades and repairs to their current fleet of F-16s. We will look at that and we will talk to them about it."

The talks on that, he however said, have not really started yet, "so we haven't fleshed things out in any detail. But there is an agreement on our side that is something that we would be willing to consider if they pushed us on it."

Asked how many F-16s Pakistan now has, the official said that there could be 32 now but he was not sure.

PTI