Pakistan Blocks NATO Supply Convoy
The New York Times reports:
Pakistan closed the most important border crossing for trucks supplying NATO-led coalition troops in Afghanistan on Thursday in apparent retaliation for an attack by coalition helicopters on a Pakistani security post hours earlier.
Trucks and oil tankers were stopped at the border post of Torkham just north of Peshawar and it was unclear when the post, one of two land crossings, would reopen, a Pakistani security official said.
A closure of the crossing through which NATO and American troops receive most of their non-lethal equipment is rare, and signaled a worsening in the military relationship between Pakistan and the United States just three months before the Obama administration takes stock of progress in Afghanistan.
The Pakistani interior minister, Rehman Malik indicated that NATO strikes in Pakistan were being taken extremely seriously. “We will have to see whether we are allies or enemies,” he said Thursday.
The incident on Thursday followed two attacks in a week by coalition helicopters in Pakistan that had fueled anger over the growing use of drone strikes.
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