US cannot pay $5,000 a Nato truck to Pakistan: Panetta
Jus watched the Geo’s headline panetta said ziyada. Paisa dai kar lutna nai chahtai !..oh god Wht else we need in order to realize that America is mistreating us!
Re: US cannot pay $5,000 a Nato truck to Pakistan: Panetta
Re: US cannot pay $5,000 a Nato truck to Pakistan: Panetta
^ the article is not clear
Re: US cannot pay $5,000 a Nato truck to Pakistan: Panetta
China supports Pakistan and suggests a balanced approach towards US!
**ISLAMABAD: ** **Pakistan’s all-weather friend may have publicly backed it in the face of simmering tensions with the United States, but China has privately advised Islamabad to avoid taking ‘extreme positions’ in its relationship with the United States.
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The message was delivered by Chinese Foreign Minister Yang Jiechi, who held extensive discussions with Pakistan’s top civil and military leaderships during his just-concluded trip to Islamabad, sources said.
The highlight of his visit was China’s emphasis on the world to recognise Pakistan’s ‘huge sacrifices’ in the war against terrorism and back Islamabad’s efforts to safeguard its ‘sovereignty, territorial integrity and dignity’.
The carefully-worded remarks appeared to be aimed at the United States, which has questioned Pakistan’s credentials in the fight against militancy.
But privately, the Chinese foreign minister also conveyed ‘a word of wisdom’ to the Pakistani leadership on how to deal with the US. Beijing wants to see a breakthrough in the lingering stalemate between Pakistan and the US, sources said.
**Points of convergence
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“China wants Pakistan to have a balanced approach in its dealings with the US,” said a top Pakistani official familiar with the high-level discussions.
The official, however, did not say if a ‘balanced approach’ meant that Islamabad should stop insisting on an unconditional apology for last year’s Nato cross-border attack at a Pakistani check post.
He explained that while China itself had serious differences with the US on many issues, the two countries still had many areas of convergence.
“And that’s what they expect from us … to build our relationship where we have points of convergence with Americans,” the official said.
The official added that Beijing had encouraged Islamabad to sort out its differences, including the resumption of supplies for foreign forces stationed in Afghanistan.
Periodic consultations
The official said the visit of the Chinese foreign minister was part of periodic consultations between the two countries and preparation for the upcoming visit by President Zardari to Beijing, but the issue of ongoing tensions between Pakistan and the US figured prominently during the discussions.
Following his meeting with President Asif Ali Zardari, Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gilani and Foreign Minister Hina Rabbani Khar, the top Chinese diplomat on Wednesday met with Army chief Gen Ashfaq Parvez Kayani.
Little was said about the meeting in a statement issued by the Inter-Services Public Relations (ISPR).
“The visiting dignitaries remained with him for some time and discussed the matters of mutual interest,” said a terse statement issued by the military’s media wing.
Perspective from
Re: US cannot pay $5,000 a Nato truck to Pakistan: Panetta
Dear Rangoli,
The spokesperson to the President, Farhatullah Babar, made it clear that the invitation was unconditional and not linked to the reopening of ground lines of communication for NATO or to any other issues. It’s been over six months since the Pakistani government decided to close the NATO supply route through Pakistan. Our officials have only attempted to create a common ground and find a resolution through several meetings during this period**.** We only wish to see our countries move forward for the sake of achieving our common objectives. The seriousness of the situation between the two independent nations at times certainly created a difference of opinions. But it would be wrong to imply that the U.S. is resorting to unethical ways like blackmailing. We have not hit a dead end regarding the discussions. We remain hopeful that a resolution is possible and that we can move forward together for the good of the region.
LTC Taylor,
DET, United States Central Command
www.Centcom.mil/Ur
Re: US cannot pay $5,000 a Nato truck to Pakistan: Panetta
First of all make a correction, not our common objectives it’s American objectives in the region which are at play and God knows what they are. Secondly American conduct in the region (arrogance and trigger happy) is inflaming anti Americanism that is if the Americans care. The American attitude of my way or the highway is one of the biggest obstacles in peace in the region.
For pakistan its always do more, and on the other side themselves want a negotiated end to the war. Pakistan needs to tackle sanctuaries on pakistani side of the border but they themselves have left almost all of eastern afghanistan untouched since anti pakistan elements are based there. Unless the Americans change their attitude I don’t see any marked difference in the relations between the two countries.
Re: US cannot pay $5,000 a Nato truck to Pakistan: Panetta
SALANG PASS, Afghanistan — Nowhere is the impact of Pakistan’s ban on NATO truck traffic more visible than here at the top of the
Hindu Kush, on one of the only alternative overland routes for supply convoys to reach Kabul and the rest of the country.For 20 miles north and south of the old Soviet-built tunnel at Salang Pass, thousands of trucks are idled beside the road, waiting for a turn to get through its perilous, one-and-a-half-mile length.This is the only passable route for heavy truck traffic bringing NATO supplies in from the Central Asian republics to the north, as they now must come.
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There are other roads, but they are often single-lane dirt tracks through even higher mountain passes, or they are frequently subject to ambushes by insurgents and bandits. So a tunnel built to handle 1,000 vehicles a day, and until the Pakistani boycott against NATO in November handling 2,000, now tries — and often fails — to let 10,000 vehicles through, alternating northbound and southbound truck traffic every other day.****“It’s only a matter of time until there’s a catastrophe,” said Lt. Gen. Mohammad Rajab, the head of maintenance for the Salang Pass.
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“One hundred percent certain, there will be a disaster, and when there is, it’s not a disaster for Afghanistan alone, but for the whole international community that uses this road.” He said 90 percent of the traffic now was trailer and tanker trucks carrying NATO supplies.
The tunnel near the top of this 12,000-foot pass is so narrow — no more than 20 feet across at the base, and less toward the top — that the heavily laden trucks often jam as they try to pass one another, lodging in tightly against the sloping, rough-hewn walls. The trucks have to be winched apart and dragged out by heavy equipment.
Other trucks get stuck when their drivers deliberately underestimate their overhead clearance — the tunnel is 16 feet high, but only in the very center.“It’s a nightmare,” one tank truck driver said.
The tunnel lighting does not work, nor do closed-circuit television cameras installed to warn of problems. The tunnel’s roof leaks water, rendering the savagely potholed roadsurface a mixture of mud, chopped-up asphalt and broken concrete. Ventilator fans in most of the tunnel are out of order, leading to such high levels of carbon monoxide that officials are talking about a system to pump emergency oxygen in, General Rajab said.The roadway, with only patches of paving, has ruts so deep that trucks sometimes just tip over on their sides, as happened last week with a tanker truck carrying fuel for NATO.
It flipped over just south of the main tunnel, cracking the tank and spawning a small stream flowing down the steep switchbacks, which enterprising Afghans quickly diverted into makeshift canals and impoundments so they could carry out the dangerous work of filling containers from the flow.
That was the second day in a row that a truck tipped over near the top of the pass, blocking all daytime traffic for most of those two days. In between, the road opened at night, but then a NATO military convoy came along, forcing all civilian truck traffic to cease for 12 hours, General Rajab said.With the increased traffic and the deterioration of the roads it has caused, a journey that used to take a day, from Kabul to Hairatan, a fuel and freight depot town on the northern border with Uzbekistan, now requires 8 to 10 days for trucks, according to interviews with many drivers. For cars it takes two days.
“Yesterday I slept over there,” said Sayid Ali, a tractor-trailer driver who was hauling cement, pointing at the next switchback down, less than a mile away. “Tonight I’ll probably sleep here.” He had so far spent five days just in a 25-mile-long climb to the tunnel, and was still two miles away, stuck by the fuel spill.
A tanker driver named Mohammadullah, hauling fuel for a NATO contractor, was eight days out of Kabul and still climbing. He said the drivers often ran out of food and were forced to pay exorbitant prices to vendors who drove up with supplies. He expected the round trip would take him most of a month.“I’d rather be driving to Kandahar,” he said. Trucks need to have armed guards because of insurgents on that route, he said, “but I’d rather do that than all this waiting.”
The much-shorter Pakistani routes, from seaports like Karachi on better roads, were closed to protest the deaths of 24 Pakistani soldiers in an American airstrike. But Pakistan has expressed willingness to reopen the frontier: for a fee of thousands of dollars per truck, compared with $250 previously. “We’re not about to get gouged in the price,” Defense Secretary Leon E. Panetta said on ABC’s “This Week.”
The Salang Pass tunnel, built in 1964 by the Soviets and never completely finished (it lacks amenities like interior surfacing of the walls and an escape tunnel), has a tragic history. Nine hundred Russians and Afghans reportedly died of asphyxiation in the tunnel in 1982 when a military convoy was trapped inside by an accident or an explosion.
Two years ago, huge avalanches at the southern mouth of the tunnel killed at least 64 people, buried alive in cars and buses.
General Rajab says he worries that the tunnel could even collapse — no thorough overhaul has ever been done, he said, because the route is too vital to close long enough for major repairs.
“It’s crazy to use this road; there are just too many problems,” he said. “They should open an alternative or we will never solve this.”
A spokesman for the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force, Lt. Col. Jimmie Cummings, said the military had no comment. “We do not discuss the particular road routes that we use for movements of logistics,” he said.The only remotely viable alternative route, General Rajab said, is over the Shibar Pass, farther west. It involves a three-day detour, which could be an improvement over Salang these days. However, the military would have to work at improving security on that route, he said — when he recently detoured trucks that way, they were looted before reaching the pass.