The United States said Thursday that Pakistan has let back in two officers to work with its military after a six-month gap, in what it called a small sign of cooperation after soaring tensions.
According to AFP, the Pentagon said that two liaison officers returned in the past week to Peshawar after being kicked out by Pakistan in its outrage over a border airstrike that killed 24 of its soldiers.
But the Pentagon said that Pakistan has not let back trainers or reopened its border to NATO supplies, two of the main forms of support for the US-led war effort that have been shut down since the November 26 border incident.
The returning officers are in charge of liaising with the headquarters of Pakistan’s 11th Corps, which covers the lawless border region where the US-backed ISAF force believes Al-Qaeda and Taliban fighters enjoy a safe haven.
“The tactical and operational coordination between the ISAF and Pakistani military is getting better — in fits and starts, to be sure, but it is getting better,” said Pentagon spokesman Captain John Kirby.
“This is another example of
how that coordination is going
to continue to improve,” Kirby
told reporters.
Kirby said that the two officers — who report to the Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan — returned to Peshawar at the request of Pakistan.
Meanwhile, a press release by Inter-Services Public Relations (ISPR) refuted a wire report
about the return of 10 US trainers in Pakistan, calling it “baseless and out of context”.
The report claimed that 10 special operations soldiers of the US military had been sent to a training site near Peshawar, where they would instruct trainers from the Frontier Corps (FC) in counter-insurgency warfare.