The US said on Monday it was withdrawing its team of negotiators from Pakistan without securing a long-sought deal on supply routes for its war in Afghanistan, publicly exposing a diplomatic stalemate and deeply strained relations that appear at risk of deteriorating further.
Pakistan banned trucks from carrying supplies to the war effort in neighboring Afghanistan last year to protest a cross-border NATO air attack that killed 24 Pakistani soldiers, a measure US officials initially hoped would be short term.
That strike fanned national anger over everything from covert CIA drone strikes to the US incursion into Pakistan last year to kill al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden, and the supply routes evolved into a lightning-rod issue between the two countries.
After six weeks of negotiations that at least once appeared close to a deal, the Pentagon acknowledged that the team had failed to clinch an accord and was coming home.
“I believe that some of the team left over the weekend and the remainder of the team will leave shortly,” Pentagon spokesman George Little told reporters.
They could return to Pakistan at any time, if warranted, he added.
With the Pakistan routes unavailable, NATO has turned to countries to the north of Afghanistan for more expensive, longer land routes. Resupplying troops in Afghanistan through the northern route is about two-and-a-half times more expensive than shipping items through Pakistan, a US defense official said on condition of anonymity.
The announcement about the negotiators came just days after US Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta said the US was reaching the limits of its patience because of safe havens Pakistan offered to Islamist insurgents, who are attacking US forces across the border in Afghanistan.
Pakistan’s envoy to the US had warned that Panetta’s comments on Thursday last week in Kabul were unhelpful to efforts to narrow the differences between the two countries and came at a critical moment in negotiations.
With US negotiators returning home, White House spokesman Jay Carney suggested it was now up to Pakistan to break the deadlock.
“We are ready to send officials back to Islamabad when the Pakistani government is ready to conclude the agreement,” Carney told reporters. “And it certainly remains our goal to complete an agreement as soon as possible.”
US Department of State spokeswoman Victoria Nuland echoed those remarks, saying: “We’ve had some agreement in some areas.”
“I think both sides are going to take some counsel and then we’ll see when we can get back to it,” she said.
Pakistani Ambassador to the US Sherry Rehman said she did not view the decision to withdraw the negotiators as an “institutional pullout” by the US.
The US has rebuffed Pakistan’s demands for an apology over the NATO airstrike and both sides failed to agree on tariffs for supplies passing through Pakistan.
‘GREAT OPPRTUNITY’: The Paraguayan president made the remarks following Donald Trump’s tapping of several figures with deep Latin America expertise for his Cabinet Paraguay President Santiago Pena called US president-elect Donald Trump’s incoming foreign policy team a “dream come true” as his nation stands to become more relevant in the next US administration. “It’s a great opportunity for us to advance very, very fast in the bilateral agenda on trade, security, rule of law and make Paraguay a much closer ally” to the US, Pena said in an interview in Washington ahead of Trump’s inauguration today. “One of the biggest challenges for Paraguay was that image of an island surrounded by land, a country that was isolated and not many people know about it,”
‘FIGHT TO THE END’: Attacking a court is ‘unprecedented’ in South Korea and those involved would likely face jail time, a South Korean political pundit said Supporters of impeached South Korean President Yoon Suk-yeol yesterday stormed a Seoul court after a judge extended the impeached leader’s detention over his ill-fated attempt to impose martial law. Tens of thousands of people had gathered outside the Seoul Western District Court on Saturday in a show of support for Yoon, who became South Korea’s first sitting head of state to be arrested in a dawn raid last week. After the court extended his detention on Saturday, the president’s supporters smashed windows and doors as they rushed inside the building. Hundreds of police officers charged into the court, arresting dozens and denouncing an
‘DISCRIMINATION’: The US Office of Personnel Management ordered that public DEI-focused Web pages be taken down, while training and contracts were canceled US President Donald Trump’s administration on Tuesday moved to end affirmative action in federal contracting and directed that all federal diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) staff be put on paid leave and eventually be laid off. The moves follow an executive order Trump signed on his first day ordering a sweeping dismantling of the federal government’s diversity and inclusion programs. Trump has called the programs “discrimination” and called to restore “merit-based” hiring. The executive order on affirmative action revokes an order issued by former US president Lyndon Johnson, and curtails DEI programs by federal contractors and grant recipients. It is using one of the
One of Japan’s biggest pop stars and best-known TV hosts, Masahiro Nakai, yesterday announced his retirement over sexual misconduct allegations, reports said, in the latest scandal to rock Japan’s entertainment industry. Nakai’s announcement came after now-defunct boy band empire Johnny & Associates admitted in 2023 that its late founder, Johnny Kitagawa, for decades sexually assaulted teenage boys and young men. Nakai was a member of the now-disbanded SMAP — part of Johnny & Associates’s lucrative stable — that swept the charts in Japan and across Asia during the band’s nearly 30 years of fame. Reports emerged last month that Nakai, 52, who since
RSS