Pakistan gets its invite to Chicago moot

NATO said on Tuesday it had invited Pakistan to a summit in Chicago next week, lifting a veiled threat that it might exclude the country from the talks on the future of Afghanistan.
“Allies decided to invite President (Asif Ali) Zardari of Pakistan to Chicago to the meeting on Afghanistan,” NATO spokeswoman Oana Lungescu said in a statement. “This meeting will underline the strong commitment of the international community to the people of Afghanistan and to its future. Pakistan has an important role to play in that future.”
NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen suggested on Friday that Pakistan could be excluded from the May 20-21 summit if it failed to reopen the supply routes to Afghanistan that it closed after 24 of its soldiers were killed by a NATO cross-border air attack last November. Rasmussen noted that other countries providing supply routes to NATO had been invited to the summit, which will map out a future for Afghanistan after most foreign combat troops are withdrawn at the end of 2014. President Zardari’s spokesman said he was considering whether to attend the Chicago summit and that the invitation was “unconditional and not linked to the opening of ground lines of communication for NATO or to any other issue.”
Pakistan has demanded a formal apology from the United States for the attack before it reopens the supply routes, and has also called for an end to US drone strikes on its tribal areas bordering Afghanistan. Pakistan’s involvement in the Chicago talks would minimise its international isolation and could boost its leverage over the future of neighbouring Afghanistan, as NATO countries pull out their combat forces by 2014. Pakistan stopped short of confirming immediately that the president would travel to Chicago, but the invitation marks a return from the cold for Islamabad, which boycotted the last major international talks on Afghanistan, held in Bonn in December.
“The president informed the NATO secretary general that he would consider the invitation in the light of the guidelines of the parliament and the advice of the government,” said spokesman Farhatullah Babar. Analysts say Pakistan has no choice but to reopen the border as US cash is needed to help boost its meagre state coffers, at a time when major NATO discussions are under way affecting its own strategic future.
Sources familiar with the discussions told AFP the government had effectively decided to end the blockade, probably by the beginning of next week.
Both sides had found “broad agreement” on logistics for the fuel and other non-lethal supplies that would go overland through Pakistan to Afghanistan, one source said.
“The meetings will indicate that the decision has the backing of all the stakeholders,” the source told AFP.
“This should minimise the prospect for Islamist groups to exploit the situation in the hope that they’ll get the backing of the military establishment.” Pakistan previously negotiated a fee of $160 per 40-foot container and is now looking to secure anywhere from $320 to $500, although the figure has yet to be agreed, one source told AFP. The United States has also guaranteed payment of at least $1.1 billion should the borders reopen, as compensation for fighting militants, the source added. Foreign Minister Hina Rabbani Khar said on Monday that Pakistan had made its point and that “we now need to move on and go into a positive zone and try to conduct our relations.”
The US State Department said both countries had made “considerable progress” on ending the blockade, which has halted fuel and supply trucks from the port city of Karachi in the south to two Afghan border crossings. The United States has made increasing use of more expensive routes into northern Afghanistan and the Pakistan supply routes constitute as little as 25 percent of what NATO needs to sustain itself in its nearly 11-year fight against the Taliban.
Mir Mohammad Yousuf Shahwani, chairman of the All Pakistan Oil Tanker Owners Association, told AFP he had been informed by a senior official in the petroleum ministry that Pakistan would reopen the supply line within days.