Dawn – Pakistan reopens Afghan supply routes as US says sorry

Washington, 4 July 2012. Pakistan agreed to reopen key supply routes into Afghanistan on Tuesday, ending a bitter stand-off after US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said she was sorry for the loss of life in a botched air raid.

A US official said that as part of the deal Washington will release about $1.1 billion to the Pakistani military from a US “coalition support fund” designed to reimburse Pakistan for the cost of counter-insurgency operations.

The money had been frozen due to the tensions between the two countries.

The agreement ends a seven-month diplomatic row that had seen US-Pakistan ties, already soured by the US killing of al Qaeda chief Osama bin Laden, plunge to a new low and gravely impede US and Nato efforts in Afghanistan.

The breakthrough, announced by Clinton after she spoke by telephone with Pakistani Foreign Minister Hina Rabbani Khar, follows months of negotiations.

Islamabad, a key but wary ally in the fight against Taliban militants, had steadfastly insisted Washington should apologise for the November attack when a US aircraft mistakenly killed 24 Pakistan soldiers.

“Foreign Minister Khar and I acknowledged the mistakes that resulted in the loss of Pakistani military lives,” Clinton said in a statement.

“We are sorry for the losses suffered by the Pakistani military. We are committed to working closely with Pakistan and Afghanistan to prevent this from ever happening again.”

Pakistan confirmed it had decided to reopen the routes into Afghanistan, which are vital as the US and its Nato allies withdraw troops and equipment from Afghanistan ahead of a 2014 deadline.

“The meeting of Pakistan’s defence committee (DCC) of the cabinet has decided to reopen the Nato supplies,” the minister of information, Qamar Zaman Kaira, told reporters in Islamabad.

Pakistan’s new Prime Minister Raja Pervaiz Ashraf, who chaired the meeting, also acknowledged it was time to end the blockade.

“The continued closure of supply lines not only impinge our relationship with the US, but also on our relations with the 49 other member states of Nato,” he told top civilian and military leaders.

But underlining ever-present security fears, the deal drew a swift warning from the Pakistani Taliban that they would attack Nato supply trucks and kill the drivers if they tried to resume ferrying in supplies to Afghanistan.

Spokesman Ehsanullah Ehsan told AFP the Taliban “will not allow any truck to pass and will attack it.” The blockade had forced the United States and its allies to rely on longer, more expensive northern routes through Central Asia, Russia and the Caucasus, costing the US military about $100 million a month, the Pentagon has said.

Initial hopes of a deal on reopening the routes had fallen apart at a Nato summit in Chicago in May, amid reports that Pakistan was demanding huge fees for the thousands of trucks that rumble across the border every year.

Clinton stressed that “Pakistan will continue not to charge any transit fee,” adding it was “a tangible demonstration of Pakistan’s support for a secure, peaceful and prosperous Afghanistan.”

The deal was announced just days before Tokyo hosts a donor’s meeting on Afghanistan this weekend, when Afghan President Hamid Karzai will reportedly seek $3.9 billion in annual international aid to rebuild the economy.

The deal sends “a strong signal going into… the Afghan conference in Tokyo that we are back on track in terms of being able to support the Nato mission,” State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland said.

Clinton is due to attend the Tokyo talks, as some of the international focus now shifts to rebuilding in Afghanistan with almost all foreign combat troops due to withdraw by the end of 2014, some 13 years after the 2001 US invasion.

The US commander of Nato-led forces in Afghanistan, General John Allen, who held talks in Islamabad twice in the last six days, praised the deal as “a demonstration of Pakistan’s desire to help secure a brighter future for both Afghanistan and the region at large.”

Pakistan’s ambassador to the US, Sherry Rehman, also stressed that it showed Islamabad was “playing our role as responsible global partner in stabilizing the region.”

We appreciate Secretary Clinton’s statement, and hope that bilateral ties can move to a better place from here,” she said.

While Islamabad had demanded a formal apology for the deaths of its border troops, a US and Nato investigation said the killings were the result of mistakes made on both sides.

http://dawn.com/2012/07/03/closure-of-nato-routes-harms-us-ties-pm-ashraf/

BBC News – Pakistan considers taxing Nato Afghanistan trucks

12 December 2011

akistan is considering charging millions of dollars in annual taxes on Nato trucks and fuel tankers, officials have told the BBC.

The vehicles pass through Pakistan on their way to Afghanistan.

The charges might include taxes on fuel in addition to port and storage fees, they said.

The supply route is a lifeline for Nato troops but Pakistan closed it last month after 24 of its soldiers were killed in a Nato air strike.

Thousands of tankers are now stranded.

On Sunday, Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani told the BBC that Pakistan may continue its blocking of Nato convoys into Afghanistan for several weeks.

On the same day, gunmen attacked tankers stranded in the province of Balochistan for the second time in four days.

The attackers shot dead a driver and destroyed seven tankers.

Pakistan stopped the convoys in protest at US air strikes that killed the 24 troops at two checkpoints on the Afghan border.

Mr Gilani refused to rule out closing Pakistan’s airspace to the US.

Credibility gap  

The air strikes on 26 November marked a new low point in relations between Washington and Islamabad, which have long been strained by the US-led military campaign against militants in Afghanistan.

In a wide-ranging interview with the BBC, Mr Gilani said Pakistan and the US needed to trust each other more.

“Yes there is a credibility gap, we are working together and still we don’t trust each other,” he said.

“I think we have to improve our relationship so that… we should have more confidence in each other.”

Nato forces in Afghanistan rely significantly on overland supply routes from the Pakistani sea port of Karachi, which enter Afghanistan through the Khyber Pass.

Hundreds of lorries have been camped out next to border crossings, waiting for the crisis to blow over.

Nato has apologised for the air strikes, calling them a “tragic unintended incident”.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-16145380

Dawn – Clinton hopes for Pakistan cooperation despite Bonn boycott

30 October 2011

Busan: US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said on Wednesday she regretted Pakistan’s decision to boycott next week’s international conference on Afghanistan but hoped to secure Islamabad’s cooperation in future.

“Nothing will be gained by turning our backs on mutually beneficial cooperation. Frankly it is regrettable that Pakistan has decided not to attend the conference in Bonn,” Clinton told a news conference in South Korea.

Pakistan pulled out of the conference on the future of Afghanistan on Tuesday in reaction to a cross-border attack by Nato that killed 24 of its soldiers and plunged US-Pakistani relations deeper into crisis.

“I would express regret and hope that perhaps there can be a follow-up way that we can have the benefit of Pakistani participation in this international effort to try to work a stable, secure peaceful outcome in Afghanistan.”

Clinton stressed that US officials were making every effort to investigate what she called a “tragic incident”.

“What is most important I think is that we learn lessons from this tragedy because we have to continue to work together.”

http://www.dawn.com/2011/11/30/clinton-hopes-for-pakistan-cooperation-despite-bonn-boycott.html

BBC News – Pakistan denies firing provoked Nato border attack

28 November 2011

Pakistan has denied reports that it opened fire first, provoking the Nato air strike which killed 24 troops at a checkpoint on the Afghan border.

It follows claims by Afghan officials that Nato forces were retaliating for gunfire from the Pakistani side of the volatile border on Saturday.

On Sunday Pakistan’s army chief led mourners as those killed in the strike were buried at military headquarters.

Nato has apologised, calling it a “tragic unintended incident”.

The White House has also described the deaths as a tragedy.

“We mourn the brave Pakistani service members who lost their lives,” said a spokesman for President Barack Obama, Jay Carney.

“Our sympathies go our to their families and go out to Pakistan.”

“As for our relationship with Pakistan, it continues to be an important cooperative relationship that is also very complicated,” said Mr Carney.

‘Under fire’  

The night-time attack took place at the Salala checkpoint in the Mohmand district, about 1.5 miles (2.5 km) from the Afghan border, early on Saturday morning.

The Pakistani army said helicopters and fighter aircraft hit two border posts, killing 24 people and leaving 13 injured.

Local officials said the two posts were about 300m apart on a mountain top.

Unnamed Afghan officials quoted in The Wall Street Journal said Saturday’s attack was called in to shield Nato and Afghan forces who had come under fire.

One official quoted in the paper said that Kabul believed the shooting came from an army base.

“This is not true. They are making up excuses. What are their losses, casualties?” Pakistani army spokesman Major-General Athar Abbas said in response to the allegations.

Military sources earlier told the BBC that a US-Afghan special forces mission had been in the area, where a Taliban training camp was believed to be operating.

They said the mission came under fire from a position within Pakistan, and they received permission from the headquarters of Nato’s Isaf mission to fire back.

On Monday an Afghan defence official with direct knowledge of the attack told the BBC’s Bilal Sarwary in Kabul that Nato was targeting high level Afghan and Pakistani Taliban commanders, including a foreign militant training suicide attackers in the Khas Kunar area close to the Pakistani border.

Officials say that these training camps were not far from Pakistani checkpoints.

‘Grave infringement’

But Major-General Abbas said that the raid went on for more than an hour and continued even after local commanders contacted Nato telling them to stop the strike, according to the Associated Press news agency.

Pakistani officials have consistently maintained that there had been no militant activity in the area, and most of the Pakistani soldiers were asleep. They also said Nato had the grid references of the posts and therefore should not have fired.

Pakistan’s Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani called it a “grave infringement of Pakistan’s sovereignty” and officials responded by cutting key Pakistani supply lines to Nato in Afghanistan.

The BBC’s Ilyas Khan in Islamabad says that public anger has intensified amid growing demands from Pakistan’s opposition parties to sever all ties with the US.

On Monday lawyers staged protests across the country and Reuters news agency reported that Pakistan’s fuel suppliers had said that they would not in the immediate future resume supplies to Nato forces in Afghanistan.

Nato chief Anders Fogh Rasmussen said he had written to Mr Gilani to “make it clear that the deaths of Pakistani personnel are as unacceptable and deplorable as the deaths of Afghan and international personnel”.

Nato has said it is investigating what happened.

The incident looks set to deal a fresh blow to US-Pakistan relations, which had only just begun to recover following a unilateral US raid that killed Osama Bin Laden in Pakistan in May.

Pakistani troops are fighting the Taliban in the crucial border region. Hundreds of militants have been resisting attempts by the security forces to clear them from southern and south-eastern parts of the district.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-15915247

Dawn – Steps to implement DCC decision taken

Syed Irfan Raza

28 November 2011

Islamabad: Sunday saw a flurry of activities in the capital as the government went into overdrive to express its anger over the Nato air strike that took place in the early hours of Saturday.

While the American administration was informed of the decisions taken by the Defence Committee of the Cabinet, including the blocking of the Nato supply routes as well as the deadline to vacate Shamsi airbase, the opposition raised questions about the preparedness of the military personnel who had been killed in the attack.

In accordance with the DCC decision, Pakistan suspended Nato supplies to Afghanistan and US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton was informed about it.

Foreign Minister Hina Rabbani Khar spoke to Ms Clinton by telephone in the early hours of Sunday, conveying the decisions taken by the DCC.

Talking to reporters, Interior Minister Rehman Malik claimed that the supply of Nato had not been suspended, but “stopped permanently” in line with DCC’s decisions.

He said all other decisions of the DCC would be implemented in letter and spirit. “The decisions of the DCC are final and would be implemented.”

The minister said Nato containers, which had been stopped, would not be allowed to cross the border into Afghanistan.

According to a statement issued by the Foreign Office, the foreign minister conveyed “deep sense of rage felt across Pakistan” over loss of 28 soldiers and told Ms Clinton that “such attacks are totally unacceptable”.

She said that such strikes demonstrated complete disregard for international law and human life and were in stark violation of Pakistan’s sovereignty.

The foreign minister was quoted as saying: “This negates the progress made by the two countries on improving relations and forces Pakistan to revisit the terms of engagement.”

She also informed Ms Clinton about the DCC decision that the US should vacate the Shamsi airbase within 15 days. The US secretary of state offered condolences over the loss of life, the statement said.

Ms Clinton said she was deeply saddened by the event and conveyed the US government’s desire to work with Pakistan to resolve the issue.

Meanwhile, the military authorities negated the US claim that Nato had carried out strikes after its helicopters had come under fire from the ground.

“These were lame excuses that the attack was made after Pakistani soldiers opened fire on Nato forces or that Nato forces were chasing the Taliban in the area,” said Inter-Services Public Relations Director General Major-Geneneral Athar Abbas.

Nato has already been communicated about two Pakistani posts in Mohmand Agency called ‘Golden’ and ‘Volcano’ on the top of the height in the area with national flag hoisted over them. “Even then they were attacked,” he said.

He said Mohmand Agency had been cleared of militants during the four-month operation and there was no militants’ hideout in the area. Therefore, he said, the US claim that Nato forces were chasing the Taliban was ‘ill-logical’.

General Abbas said the Nato attacks continued for a long time during which the military’s General Headquarters contacted the Nato authorities and apprised them of the aerial attacks. However, Nato officials did not take any action to stop such provocative strikes.

Asked if Pakistan will be involved in investigation announced by the Nato chief to probe into the incident, he said the modus operandi of the investigation was yet to be decided.

President-PM Meeting: President Asif Ali Zardari and Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani met at the presidency and discussed the Nato attacks for the second consecutive day.

Sources in the presidency told Dawn that the president and the prime minister were worried that the Nato strikes had taken place soon after the ‘memogate’ that had soured relations between the civilian set-up and the military establishment.

Opposition: Calling for a joint session of parliament to debate the Nato air strike, Leader of Opposition in the National Assembly Chaudhry Nisar Ali Khan questioned at a news conference why army officers and soldiers had been caught unawares and unprepared.

The PML-N leader said that although he considered the present rulers mainly responsible for the killings of soldiers, the military leadership could not be absolved completely of its responsibility.

Not only the rulers, but even Army Chief General Ashfaq Parvez Kayani had in the past threatened to retaliate if the US carried out drone attacks, he said, adding that the drone attacks were continuing and there had been no response from the military.

He said the May 2 Abbottabad incident and recent Nato air strikes on security posts had raised many questions about the defence preparedness of the armed forces. Was there any arrangement to provide the soldiers a cover at the posts against any aggression? he asked. He said if anti-aircraft guns are installed at these posts. “If the guns are there then why these were not used?”

He said: “Previously former army chief General Pervez Musharraf sent the troops to the top of a hill at Kargil and later left them to be killed.”

Chaudhry Nisar said soldiers in such a large number could not be killed simply by strafing if they had been in bunkers.

When asked if his party wanted a commission to investigate the incident, he said first the replies to these questions should be presented in parliament.

The PML-N leader said his party wanted a joint session of parliament within a few days much before Ashura. He demanded that it should be an open session because the time had come for the nation to be informed about facts.

He welcomed the decisions taken by the DCC, but raised serious doubts about their implementation. He regretted that the government did not take any step to implement the resolutions adopted by parliament and the all-party conference.

Chaudhry Nisar claimed that it was the PML-N which had raised the issue of Shamsi airbase in a joint session of parliament and demanded that its foreign control must be ended.

Despite an announcement by the government that the US had been asked to vacate the airbase in Balochistan, it is not clear who controls the base.

When asked what would be the line of action if the US did not vacate the base in 15 days as recommended by the DCC, ISPR director general Major-General Athar Abbas said “Speculative. Speculative means we will cross the bridge when it comes.”

During a briefing to parliament in June in the aftermath of the killing of Osama bin Laden in Abbottabad, top military officials had disclosed that the airfield, long suspected of housing US drones, was actually not a Pakistan Air Force facility and its control had been handed over to the United Arab Emirates in 1990s.

Later, in an interview with AP a UAE official denied that his country had any operational role in the base, although he said that wealthy Arabs occasionally used it to fly to Pakistan on hunting expeditions.

The US reportedly used the airbase as a forward staging point in the initial period after it invaded Afghanistan following the 9/11 attacks. Reports surfaced in the media in 2008 that the drones used in attacks on tribal areas were taking off from the Shamsi airfield.

Two weeks after the parliamentary briefing, Defence Minister Chaudhry Ahmed Mukhtar said that Pakistan had asked the US to withdraw its forces from the airbase and that it would be vacated soon.

The minister had even claimed that the Americans had started moving equipment and materials from the airbase. A defence ministry official had stated that the government had decided to get the base vacated because of a significant reduction in the flow of US funds and growing trust deficit between the two countries.

A US Embassy spokesperson at that time stated that there were no US military personnel at the base.

Attempts were made to contact officials of the US Embassy in Islamabad to get its version over the government decision to get the airbase vacated, but there was no response.

http://www.dawn.com/2011/11/28/steps-to-implement-dcc-decision-taken.html