Pakistan to reopen NATO supply line ‘relatively quickly

[ErnstBlofeld]

Defense Talk:

A main land route used by NATO to deliver supplies to troops in Afghanistan will reopen "relatively quickly", Pakistan said Sunday, as Islamabad sent a team to probe a cross-border attack.

Pakistan blocked the crossing in its volatile northwest on Thursday after a NATO helicopter strike that Islamabad says killed three of its soldiers. The alliance said it shot back in self-defence.

After a flurry of phone calls and pressure from ally Washington, Hussain Haqqani, Pakistan's ambassador to Washington, told CNN's "State of the Union" programme that the transit route would reopen in "less than a week".

"I think the supply line will be open relatively quickly," he said.

He added: "It's not a blockade. It's just a temporary suspension of the convoys moving through.

"I do not expect this blockade to continue for too long."

The Khyber pass at Torkham is on one of the key NATO supply routes through Pakistan into war-torn Afghanistan, where more than 152,000 US and NATO forces are fighting an increasingly emboldened Taliban-led insurgency.

The cross-border raid was the fourth in a week by NATO helicopters pursuing militants into Pakistan, which condemned the action as a serious breach of its sovereignty, threatening to destabilise ties with backer Washington.


Edited October 5, 2010 by Rheo
snipped further

[ErnstBlofeld]

There are other ways other than going through Pakistan. The U.S. and NATO supplies can use via railroad from Western Europe, go through Ukraine, Belarus, Russia, Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan, to Afghanistan. Its a little more expensive but Pakistan has proven itself totally unreliable.