Pakistan restores liaison officers at Afghanistan border

Pakistan restores liaison officers at Afghanistan border

Kabul: (December 19) Pakistan has restored its liaison officers at the coordination centers present on the Afghanistan border. The step on part of Pakistani authorities will certainly contribute towards easing the tension between
the two countries caused by the NATO attack in Mohamand agency which left two dozen Pakistani soldiers martyred.

But the US-led coalition’s supply lines that run through Pakistan remain closed since the November 26 incident and it is both in the interests of foreign forces as well as Pakistan that the routes be opened sooner rather than later,
the alliance said.

Ties between the United States and Pakistan are fraught, with Islamabad blocking the Afghan supply line for one of the longest periods yet. Last week, US lawmakers agreed to freeze $700 million in aid to Pakistan demanding it disrupt
the movement of fertilizers used in making homemade bombs, the deadliest killer of foreign troops.

But the top Nato commander in Afghanistan, US General John Allen, had spoken to the Pakistani army chief General Ashfaq Kayani and there were signs of progress over the last few days, Brigadier General Carsten Jacobsen, a spokesman
for the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF), told reporters.

“We have seen liaison officers, Pakistani officers, return to border coordination centers, General Allen has spoken to General Kayani, so we are moving in the right direction,” he said.

The border control centers were set up to help Nato and Afghan forces and their Pakistani counterparts on the other side of the porous border to coordinate operations against militants and avoid the kind of the incident that occurred
last month in which two Pakistan army posts in Mohmand came under Nato fire.

Pakistan said the United States had carried out an unprovoked attack, an accusation rejected by Washington. An investigation has been ordered and Jacobsen declined to go into details of the incident ahead of the results.

But he urged Pakistan to reopen the two supply routes into Afghanistan, which carry just under a third of all cargo for foreign forces fighting in the landlocked nation.

“It is in our interest as well as Pakistan’s interests, for economic reasons that they reopen these routes sooner rather than later,” he said.

Short URL: https://www.newspakistan.pk/?p=6621

Posted by Fayyaz Yaseen on Dec 20 2011. Filed under Pakistan. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can leave a response or trackback to this entry