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BRUSSELS – NATO has concluded agreements with Central Asian nations allowingit to evacuate vehicles and other military equipment fromAfghanistan and completely bypass Pakistan, which once provided themain supply route for coalition forces. Secretary-General Anders Fogh Rasmussen said Monday thatUzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan and Kazakhstan had agreed to allow thereverse transport of alliance equipment. Since NATO already has anagreement with Russia, the deal will allow it to ship back toEurope tens of thousands of vehicles, containers and other itemsthrough the overland route when the evacuation picks up pace laterthis year. Pakistan shut down the southern supply routes six months ago afterU.S. airstrikes accidentally killed 24 Pakistani soldiers at twoborder posts, forcing NATO to switch almost completely to theso-called Northern Distribution Network. After months of stalemate, Pakistani leaders last month signaledthat negotiations on the supply routes were progressing, just intime to secure an invitation to the weekend NATO summit in Chicago.But since then the two sides have made little progress in thetalks, officials said. The announcement on Monday appears to indicate that Washington andthe allies are now preparing for the possibility that the supplylink through Pakistan, said to be about six times cheaper than itsnorthern alternative, may not be reopened at all. It is also likelyto put pressure on Pakistan to ease its negotiating stance, whichhas been stuck in part on how much money the U.S. and NATO shouldpay to transport the trucks through Pakistani territory. NATO plans to hand over lead responsibility for the war against theTaliban to the Afghan army and police by the middle of next year,and withdraw its troops by the end of 2014. The alliance alreadyhas started drawing down its forces, which reached a peak of about140,000 last year. The Afghan security forces will have more than 350,000 members inthe next few months. The international withdrawal is scheduled tobe completed by the end of 2014. "These agreements will give us a range of new options and therobust and flexible transport network we need," Fogh Rasmussen toldreporters. He said the new deals would make "the use of the Russian transitarrangements even more effective. " Moscow also has proposed allowing NATO to set up a logisticsfacility at the air base in Ulyanovsk, Russia, for troops and cargoheading in and out of Afghanistan. ___ Rebecca Santana in Islamabad contributed to this report. I am an expert from honkonipl.com, while we provides the quality product, such as China Diode Laser For Hair Removal , Breast Beautifying, Q Switched Nd Yag Laser,and more.
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