US Secretary of State Antony Blinken on Tuesday defended military sales to Pakistan after scathing criticism from growing US partner India, which sees itself as a target for Islamabad’s F-16 planes.

A day after separate talks with his Pakistani counterpart, Blinken met with India’s foreign minister in the US capital.

The US-Pakistan alliance that emerged from the Cold War is at odds with the relationship between Islamabad and the Taliban regime in Afghanistan.

The top US diplomat defended a $450 million F-16 deal for Pakistan that was approved in early September, saying the package is for servicing Pakistan’s existing fleet.

“These are not new planes, new systems, new weapons. It gets what they have,” Blinken said at a news conference with his Indian counterpart Subrahmanyam Jaishankar.

“Pakistan’s program strengthens its ability to deal with terrorist threats emanating from Pakistan or the region. It is in nobody’s interest that these threats are allowed to continue with impunity,” Blinken said.

Jaishankar has not publicly criticized Blinken. But on Sunday, at a reception for the Indian community in the United States, Jaishankar said of the US position, “You are not deceiving anyone.”

“If someone says I’m doing this because it’s for counter-terrorism, if you talk about a plane like the F-16, everyone knows where it’s deployed,” he said, referring to the fleet’s positioning against India.

“Honestly, it’s a relationship that hasn’t served either Pakistan or American interests well,” he said.

Pakistan’s military relies on US equipment, but the relationship soured during the two-decade US war in Afghanistan as Washington believed elements in Islamabad never broke support for the Taliban, who retook power last year.

India has bought military equipment from Moscow in the past and has urged the United States to waive sanctions required by a 2017 law on any nation buying “significant” military equipment from Russia.

Alongside Blinken, Jaishankar noted that India has also made major purchases in the United States, France and Israel in recent years.

India evaluates quality and purchasing conditions and “we are making a decision that we believe is in our national interest,” he said, refusing any change due to “geopolitical tensions”.

The United States has made cordial relations with India a top priority since the late 1990s, seeing a common cause between the world’s two largest democracies on issues of China’s rise to the threat of Islamist extremism.

The United States has largely ignored India’s continued ties with Russia since the invasion of Ukraine, but was pleased when Prime Minister Narendra Modi recently told President Vladimir Putin it was “no time for war.”

Jaishankar pointed out that India was working behind the scenes and said it had “balanced hands” with Russia during the UN-Turkey-led negotiations that allowed grain shipments from the blocked Black Sea.

India is “broadening its international presence,” Jaishankar said.

“There are many more regions where we will overlap with American interests. It is to our mutual benefit that this is a complementary process,” Jaishankar said.

But as soon as rock-solid support for India begins to show gaps in the US Congress, concerns about rights soar under Modi, a Hindu nationalist whose government has been accused of marginalizing Muslims and other religious minorities and pressuring activists with legal action and financial scrutiny put.

Blinken broached the issue cautiously, saying the two nations should commit to “fundamental values, including respect for universal human rights, such as freedom of religion, belief and expression, that make our democracies stronger.”

Jaishankar indirectly replied that both nations are committed to democracy, but “from their history, tradition and social context”.

“India does not believe that the effectiveness or quality of democracy should be determined by vote banks,” he said.