WASHINGTON: The US State Department has refused to take a position on New Delhi’s complaint against Pakistan for using F-16s in an air combat with India, saying that it does not offer public comments on bilateral agreements.

“We have seen those reports and we’re following that issue very closely. I can’t confirm anything, but as a matter of policy, we don’t publicly comment on the contents of bilateral agreements… involving US defence technologies,” the department’s deputy spokesman Robert Palladino said.

On Wednesday, New York Times journalist Maria Abi-Habib released a set of tweets saying that contrary to India’s insistence, Pakistan may not have violated its F-16 sales agreement with the US even if it used the American-made fighter jets to shoot down Indian aircraft last week.

On Feb 27, Pakistan Air Force announced that it had shot down two Indian aircraft inside Pakistani airspace when they tried to give chase to Pakistani jets.

Indian officials, however, complained that the aircraft used by the PAF to ingress into occupied Kashmir had included an F-16.

New Delhi insisted that Pakistan’s use of F-16 against India meant that Islamabad stood in violation of a sales agreement with the US, which reportedly restricts the fighter jets to be used for anti-terrorism activities alone.

However, Abi-Habib, the NYT’s South Asia correspondent, explained how Pakistan may not have committed a violation of its sales agreement with the US even if it did use F-16s to shoot down Indian jets (which the PAF says never happened). “The US says if Pakistan used an F-16 to shoot down an Indian MiG, it may not have violated sale agreement,” she tweeted.