HILLARY Clinton's visit has not brought anything new for the Pakistani people. In fact the visit seems like a PR exercise but who will buy what the US is selling is difficult to imagine, beyond the already compliant government. Unfortunately, she began her visit with the usual targeting of Pakistan's nuclear arsenal by declaring how worried the US was about nuclear-armed terrorists and proliferation. Now if that was really the case the US would hasten to shore up its own rather weak command and control mechanisms, given how its nuclear weapons have a tendency to going missing and are discovered on their air force planes without any authorisation. As for proliferation, after the US-India nuclear accord, the US itself stands guilty of breaching the NPT; and there is the continuing proliferation from the US to Israel that no one seems prepared to discuss. She also wants Pakistan to "work with" the US on the Fissile Material Cutoff Treaty despite the fact that Pakistan has serious reservations on the US draft, which seeks to put Pakistan at a permanent disadvantage to India in terms of fissile material. But what was worse was the rather obvious effort by the US Secretary of State to send some sort of a "message" to the Pakistan military, not only through her nuclear diatribe but also her overuse of the "democracy" reference In terms of concrete offerings, there seemed little beyond some 10,000 tube wells, although the usual promises of working for development and so on were there Unfortunately, our Foreign Minister seems so beholden to the Americans that he goes into a spasmodic mode of gratitude in their company and yesterday was no different. He declared the US a "great friend of Pakistan" but refused to demand of this "friend" that it stop the flow of weapons coming to the TTP from Afghanistan. Given that the Peshawar blast had occurred before the joint press conference, it did not become our Foreign Minister not to have raised this crucial issue. After all, post-9/11 there is a terrorist incident every 40 hours in NWFP, and this cannot happen without the supply of weapons and money from Afghanistan. On our energy problem, Ms Clinton merely declared that the US is committed to addressing the issue; but if its way of dealing with it is to demand that we end subsidies and abandon the Iran pipeline project then we are better off without their help. If the US is serious it should sign an India-like civil nuclear deal with Pakistan but who out of the present leadership will demand this and stick to it? And that is the problem with Pakistan's US relationship. The US approach towards Pakistan was summed up in the visual of Holbrooke slumped in his chair, chewing gum nonchalantly in the talks. After all, they have what they want from Pakistan. Our tragedy is that amongst all the US-groveling, there is no one left to speak for Pakistan.