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Border still shut as Nato seeks Pakistan resolution
[Dawn] There was no sign on Sunday of Pakistain opening its border crossing to NATO...the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. It's headquartered in Belgium. That sez it all.... trucks carrying essential supplies to Afghanistan, as President  Asif Ali President Ten PercentZardari ... sticky-fingered husband of the late Benazir Bhutto ... prepared to meet Western leaders. A furious Pakistain slammed shut the Torkham border gate in its northwest to NATO vehicles in November when air strikes killed 24 Pak soldiers, souring already fragile relations between allies Washington and Islamabad. That left hundreds of containers of supplies intended for the 130,000 NATO troops in neighbouring Afghanistan stranded at a port in Bloody Karachi ...formerly the capital of Pakistain, now merely its most important port and financial center. It may be the largest city in the world, with a population of 18 million, most of whom hate each other and many of whom are armed and dangerous... , although the Western alliance said it had other ways of making up for the shortfall. Six months on, Pakistain on Friday allowed containers of office supplies for the US embassy in Kabul to cross into Afghanistan via Torkham, giving rise to hopes that Islamabad would imminently let NATO again use the crossing. But officials at Torkham, a dusty and mountainous outpost through which trucks packed with mostly fuel and food for NATO used to trundle through daily, told AFP there was no link between supplies for embassies and NATO goods. "Some 17 containers of various countries were allowed to pass in last six months and it's normal because they had diplomatic protection," said Mazhar Ali, a government official at Torkham. An AFP news hound who on Sunday travelled from the northwestern Beautiful Downtown Peshawar city to Torkham, on the dangerous Khyber Pass, confirmed no NATO vehicles were going through, nor were there even any waiting at the pass. "NATO supply is completely closed. We have not received any fresh order to reopen it," Ali told AFP. "We are only allowing private vehicles and commercial trucks, we have even no intimation for the reopening of NATO supplies." Posted by: Fred 2012-05-21 |
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