Pakistan and the United States on Tuesday signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) to regulate the shipment of NATO troops’ supplies to and from Afghanistan through Pakistani soil, an important development that also prompted the Obama administration to announce the release of $1.1 billion to Islamabad under the frozen Coalition Support Fund (CSF). With the signing of new deal on NATO supplies, hundreds of trucks and vehicles carrying food, oil and other non-lethal goods would once again start crossing the Afghan border after months of suspension by Islamabad, which took this decision in retaliation to American air strikes on its border posts in November last year that killed 24 Pakistani soldiers. Pakistan had decided on July 3 to reopen the NATO supply routes after an apology came from US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton for the death of Pakistani soldiers.
The two sides, however, took some more weeks to finalize and subsequently signed the new agreement.
The MoU has also formalized the informal arrangement made by Islamabad and Washington during the tenure of former President Pervez Musharraf after 2001 that allowed the US led international coalition to ship supplies to Afghanistan through Pakistani border for years. The deal now signed with US would also be expanded to agreements with the other NATO states.
US Charge d’Affaires Richard Hoagland, who signed the agreement on behalf of the United States with the Additional Secretary Rear Admiral Farrukh Ahmed at the Defense Ministry, Rawalpindi, dubbed the new deal as a “concrete very positive step”.
He lauded the new agreement as a demonstration of “increased transparency and openness” between the two governments. He said, “Of course it’s clear to our political leadership in both capitals that we have a number of other issues to work on. Washington, he said, would release $1.1 billion in aid to Pakistan following the signing of the new deal. The new agreement, which will end on December 31, 2015, will be applied to NATO supplies that will arrive afresh in Pakistan and not to the thousands of containers that remained stuck in the country for well over seven months but now would cross the border into Afghanistan under the old arrangement. The two sides could, however renew the Mou under mutual agreement for the subsequent periods of year after it ends on December 31, 2015. The MoU prohibits the US from shipping weapons by land through Pakistan, as demanded by parliament but the shipment of weapons for the Afghan army has been allowed. The deal would also give a right to Islamabad to refuse or reject any shipment and special radio chips would be fitted to containers for their monitoring.
Currently, the NATO supplies remain suspended after their reopening for a brief period as the militants carried out attacks on them in the Khyber Agency. The government is also finalizing a security plan that would task the police with providing security to NATO trucks in settled areas whereas the Frontier Corps (FC) would carry out security arrangements in the Tribal Areas. The US has also agreed to extend financial assistance to Pakistan for the repairing of the damaged roads after those being used for years by the heavily loaded NATO trucks and tankers but for that both sides would sign another MoU most likely in September, this year.