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| A NATO troops for Afghanistan [File Photo] |
Islamabad: Pakistani and U.S. officials on Tuesday formally signed an agreement
allowing NATO supply trucks to travel through Pakistan into Afghanistan through
the end of 2015. The deal comes a day before the head of Pakistan's spy agency
begins talks in Washington with his American counterpart on anti-terrorism
cooperation.
For more than a
decade, U.S.-led coalition troops fighting the Taliban insurgency in
Afghanistan have received supplies through Pakistan without a formal agreement
between Islamabad and Washington.
But a coalition
airstrike in November that mistakenly killed 24 soldiers prompted Pakistani
authorities to shutdown the NATO supply lines and re-evaluate future engagement
with the United States.
After months of
negations with Washington and a U.S. apology for the deaths of the soldiers,
Islamabad reopened two border crossings to coalition cargo earlier this
month. The signing of a Memorandum of Understanding Tuesday in Rawalpindi
has formally put an end to the crisis that analysts say was threatening to harm
the withdrawal of international combat troops from Afghanistan by the end of
2014.
During the signing,
the senior U.S. diplomat in Pakistan, Richard Hoagland, has reportedly said the
agreement set the stage for resolving other issues hampering anti-terrorism
cooperation between Pakistan and the United States.