Amid reports that Pakistan and NATO forces had exchanged artillery fire across the Pakistan-Afghanistan border, the New York Times said on Wednesday that Pakistan had resumed some cooperation with US-led forces in Afghanistan following Saturday’s NATO attack by working with the coalition to prevent the cross-border artillery fire incident from escalating. NATO said Islamabad communicated with the alliance to prevent the exchange of artillery fire late on Tuesday from turning into another full-blown international incident.
German Brigadier General Carsten Jacobson, a NATO spokesman in Kabul, expressed hope that Pakistan’s cooperation in resolving the incident in eastern Afghanistan’s Paktia province signalled the two sides could recover from the recent tragedy. “We are continuing operations and it is of great importance that the incidents of Saturday, as tragic as they were, do not disrupt our capability to operate in the border area and cooperate with the Pakistani side,” Jacobson was quoted as saying. However, the Inter-Services Public Relations (ISPR) denied the reports as “concocted”, stating that no such incident had taken place at the border.
