Pakistan keeps door for NATO
shut By Charles Recknagel and
Daud Khattak
Pakistan has blocked North
Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) supply trucks
from entering Afghanistan since November 26, when
NATO attacks killed two dozen Pakistani border
guards.
So far, the only public signs in
Pakistan are that the border will continue to
remain closed indefinitely.
On January 6,
the chairman of Pakistan's Parliamentary Committee
on National Security, Mian Raza Rabbani, said the
embargo would remain so long as relations with
NATO remain fraught.
That came as Rabbani
announced that his committee has
finalized its recommendations
for new terms of engagement between Pakistan and
United States-led NATO forces and will hand its
recommendations to Pakistan's prime minister early
next week. He gave no hint of what the
recommendations contain.
Once the new
rules of engagement are approved by parliament,
they will be the trigger for discussions with
Washington over the two countries' partnership. If
the two sides agree, NATO supplies could again
cross the Pakistani border into Afghanistan.
"We are discussing all this. Whatever our
foreign policy lines are for the US and NATO, the
committee is working on this," said
parliamentarian Khurshid Ahmad, a member of the
National Security Committee. "This will be a
complete package. If the US agrees to work on our
terms, well and good. But still we have not
finalized this."
But if Islamabad wants to
reset relations with Washington on its own terms,
there are also signs it may now be feeling the
pressure of Washington's July decision to withhold
US$800 million in aid.
Rabbani's committee
is reported to have received briefings by top
government financial officials on the impact of
the US aid cut as it finalized its
recommendations.
That suggests that
Islamabad could put more room for negotiations
into its final "reset" with Washington and NATO
than Rabbani's public statements imply.
Deteriorating trust Islamabad's
ban on NATO supplies is the longest blockade by
far since the start of the Afghan war in 2001.
Pakistan has partially closed the supply
routes before, notably for 11 days after
crossborder NATO air strikes in September 2010
killed three Pakistani soldiers.
But the
November 26 attack, in which NATO helicopters
mistakenly struck two border posts, killing 24
soldiers, particularly enraged Pakistan as a
symbol of deteriorating trust between the allies.
Today, the Afghanistan-Pakistan border
remains as firmly closed to NATO as it was
immediately after the November 26 attack.
Muhammad Asghar, the deputy commissioner
of Qala Abdullah District in Balochistan,
confirmed this week that trucks carrying NATO
containers continue to be sent back from the
Chaman border crossing to the southern port city
of Karachi.
"This [turning back] is a step
taken in accordance with the policy of the
government of Pakistan," Asghar said. "We have
nothing to do with what kind of equipment is [in
the containers]. That is a customs matter."
NATO's second route through the Khyber
Pass in northern Pakistan is equally blocked, with
border guards subjecting even non-NATO contracted
trucks to strict checks to verify they are not
carrying any alliance supplies.
NATO has
said publicly that it has sufficient alternate
routes to supply its forces and that it expects
the blockade to be lifted.
The two supply
routes through Pakistan account for about
one-third of all cargo that NATO brings into
Afghanistan.
Another one-third of NATO's
supplies are flown directly into Afghanistan,
while the remaining cargo goes overland along the
Northern Distribution Network, which passes
through Central Asia from the Caucasus or Russia.
Copyright (c) 2011, RFE/RL Inc.
Reprinted with the permission of Radio Free
Europe/Radio Liberty, 1201 Connecticut Ave NW,
Washington DC 20036
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