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US suspends NATO supply talks with Pakistan
Tuesday June 12, 2012 07:00:03 PM,
IANS
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Washington: Frustrated over lack of progress over talks with Pakistan to
reopen critical supply routes into Afghanistan to US and NATO
forces, the United States has called back American negotiators
from Islamabad.
Several members of the US negotiation team had already left
Islamabad, with the remaining members scheduled to depart the
country within days, Defense Department spokesman George Little
told reporters Monday.
The team had been in Pakistan for the last six weeks, attempting
to hammer out a deal to reopen the supply lines that had been
closed to American and NATO forces since last November when a
botched US air strike killed 24 Pakistani soldiers.
The team's withdrawal was a "US decision", according to Little,
who added that getting the supply lines reopened remained a top
priority for the Pentagon and the White House.
Military officials at the American embassy in Pakistan will
continue informal talks on the issue with their counterparts in
Islamabad, he said.
The Pentagon spokesman also did not rule out the chance that
negotiators could return to Pakistan at a later date.
The negotiators' departure comes less than a week after NATO
announced plans to begin using alternate supply routes in Central
Asia to support its forces in Afghanistan.
American and Pakistani negotiators were reportedly close to a deal
weeks before NATO's annual summit in Chicago in May, but an
eleventh-hour demand by Islamabad to increase the price-per-truck
cost to move supplies through Pakistan brought negotiations to a
grinding halt.
US Defense Secretary Leon Panetta further inflamed tensions
between Washington and Islamabad last Thursday when he chastised
Pakistan for providing terror groups such as Al Qaeda and the
Haqqani Network safe haven inside the country.
"We are reaching the limits of our patience here," he said during
a joint press conference with Afghan Defence Minister Abdul Rahim
Wardak in Kabul.
(Arun Kumar can
be contacted at arun.kumar@ians.in)
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