Thaw in Pak-US ties, liaison officers return to border centres

In a sign of thaw in Pakistan-US tensions, Islamabad has sent back its liaison officers to the coordination centres along the Afghan border, as a Pakistani investigation purportedly suggested that Afghan military officials could have been involved in the deadly NATO strike that killed 24 Pakistani soldiers in Mohmand Agency last month.
The Pakistan Army on Monday said liaison officers had been sent back to the border coordination centres. However, an ISPR spokesman made it clear that the officers were not called back permanently and they were only called for consultations.
“This impression is not correct that border coordination centres were closed and Pakistan Army officers at these centres were called back permanently,” an ISPR spokesman said in a statement.
“Officers were called for consultations only and now they have gone back to the border coordination centres,” he said.
The border control centres were set up to help NATO, Afghan forces and their Pakistani counterparts on the other side of frontier to coordinate operations against militants.
NATO said on Monday that Pakistan had restored liaison officers at the coordination centres along the Afghan border.
Brigadier General Carsten Jacobsen, a spokesman for the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF), told reporters in Kabul, “We have seen liaison officers, Pakistani officers, return to border coordination centres. General Allen has spoken to General Kayani, so we are moving in the right direction.”
A Pakistani official requesting anonymity said the return of Pakistani officials to the coordination centres was no doubt an important development and it reflected the slight easing of tensions between Islamabad and Washington.
“You can say it’s a positive gesture from the Pakistani side and all eyes are now fixed at the outcome of US military inquiry into the NATO strike, likely to be announced on December 23. We will see whether they accept their mistake of hitting our military outposts or not and after that it will be decided what will be done next for the normalisation of ties between Islamabad and Washington,” he said.
“It will be after the US inquiry concludes and whether they (NATO) come up with a formal apology or not that a decision will be taken on restoring NATO supplies to Afghanistan,” the official said.
In a related development, a BBC report claimed on Monday that the Pakistani probe into the NATO strike had held an Afghan military official, who was in charge of area on the other side of border close to Mohmand, responsible for the NATO strike.
“The Afghan official devised the plan for the NATO strike on Pakistani border in connivance with Indian spy agency RAW,” the report said quoting an unnamed Pakistani official. The official said no American official was involved in the attack, according to the report.
Nonetheless, another Pakistani official, who sought anonymity, said the BBC report was not correct as Pakistani investigation only suggested that Afghan officials could have resorted to a conspiracy for the NATO strike on Pakistani border posts to harm the ties between Pakistan and US..