The US and Pakistain are close to signing an agreement regulating the flow of NATO...the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. A single organization with differing goals, equipment, language, doctrine, and organization....
troop supplies in and out of Afghanistan, codifying a somewhat informal arrangement that has fueled the Afghan war over the past decade, US officials said Tuesday.
Pakistain pushed for a written pact in drawn-out negotiations that led to the supply line's reopening two weeks ago following a seven-month blockade. Islamabad had imposed the blockade in retaliation for American air strikes that killed 24 Pak soldiers on the Afghan border.
That incident brought the already troubled US-Pakistain relationship close to the breaking point. Pakistain is seen as key to getting the Taliban back to reconciliation talks aimed at ending the 11-year Afghan war.
The route through Pakistain will be vital to the scheduled withdrawal of US troops from Afghanistan in 2014, one of the reasons the US finally agreed to Islamabad's demand that it apologize for the deaths of the Pak soldiers. The US had to compensate for the temporary closure by using a longer route into Afghanistan through Central Asia that cost an additional $100 million per month.
The new agreement applies to NATO supplies that have not yet arrived in Pakistain, not the 9,000 plus of containers that have been stuck in the country for months and have slowly started moving across the border into Afghanistan. It also spells out the terms for the tens of thousands of containers that will be needed to pull NATO equipment and supplies out of Afghanistan.
US and Pak negotiators have finalised the wording of the deal and expect it to be signed soon, two senior US officials told The News Agency that Dare Not be Named, speaking on condition of anonymity
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because of the sensitivity of the issue. Pak officials did not return phone calls for comment.
The deal would prohibit the US and other NATO countries from shipping weapons by land into Afghanistan _ as demanded by Pakistain's parliament _ but allow them to withdraw lethal items from the country, said the officials. The US-led coalition does not currently transport weapons by land through Pakistain to Afghanistan. Following the deaths of the 24 soldiers, the parliament had also demanded a ban on weapons shipped through Pak airspace to Afghanistan. But there is no indication that the US has complied with this condition.
Pakistain insisted on transit fees as high as $5,000 per truck during the negotiations to reopen the supply line but eventually agreed to the existing charge of $250.
To sweeten the deal, the US agreed to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on Pakistain's roads, which the government says have suffered significant damage from heavily loaded NATO trucks. But this promise does not appear in the new agreement.