Afghanistan: entry of NATO trucks in Pakistan seven months blocked

Of supply trucks from NATO came Thursday in Afghanistan from Pakistan for the first time after seven months of deadlock caused by a diplomatic crisis between Washington and Islamabad, officials said Pakistani border. Washington and Islamabad had sealed an agreement Tuesday allowing the resumption of transit through Pakistan and convoys of troops from the NATO force in Afghanistan (ISAF), interrupted just after a bombing that killed 24 Isaf soldiers Pakistan on the Afghan border last November. This blunder was even more tense relations between Washington and Islamabad already undermined by the secret U.S. raid that killed Osama bin Laden in May 2011 in northern Pakistan, in addition to regular U.S. accusations of collusion between Islamabad and Islamist networks, including the Afghan Taliban rebels. The resumption of supplies to ISAF through Pakistan reflects this view of a warming between the two countries. Three truckloads of mineral water for the troops to ISAF were allowed to enter Afghanistan from the border post of Chaman (southwestern Pakistan), told AFP an official of Pakistan Customs on-site, Abdul Imran Razaq. "All three trucks were parked for seven months in the local customs of Chaman. We checked their documents and have allowed to cross the border after receiving a letter from the tax authorities (FBR) attesting to the resumption of traffic refueling of NATO, "he said. An official at the FBR, Hukam Dad Malik, confirmed that three trucks were allowed to cross the border, and two of them had already done. The vast majority of thousands of trucks refueling the ISAF, which belong to private companies under contract with the Pakistani forces, were stored for seven months in Karachi, Pakistan's economic capital. It was in this port in the south that arrive by boat the majority of goods and fuel supplies in the ISAF, especially in containers then trucked to Afghanistan. These convoys were often attacked in the past by criminal groups or Afghan or Pakistani Taliban insurgents, who denounce the Western presence in Afghanistan. Pakistani officials said Thursday they would take them several days before organizing the safety of these trucks in the country. A coalition of Pakistani religious parties and conservatives denounced Wednesday the resumption of such traffic by threatening to block it if the government did not come back on its decision to reauthorize and calling his supporters to demonstrate in this direction in the coming days. The US-Pakistani agreement reached this week provides for the release of a U.S. aid of $ 1.1 billion for the Pakistan army that Washington had frozen last year. His conclusion, after months of fruitless negotiations, is a relief for the United States and its NATO allies, who plan to withdraw all combat troops from Afghanistan by the end of 2014, the repatriation of equipment via Pakistan being by far the most economical.