Wednesday, March 28, 2012

US generals in Pakistan for talks


Two top US generals will on Wednesday hold talks with the Pakistan army chief in the first such meeting since air strikes killed 24 Pakistani soldiers four months ago, the Pakistan army said.
General James Mattis, the head of US Central Command, and General John Allen, the US commander in Afghanistan, had arrived in Pakistan and would meet army chief General Ashfaq Kayani later Wednesday, a Pakistani official said.
The November 26 strikes, for which the United States has so far refused to apologise, prompted Pakistan to shut its Afghan border to NATO supplies and evict American personnel from an air base reportedly used in its drone war against Al-Qaeda and the Taliban.
The Pakistani army said the meeting would focus "on the inquiry into the incident and improvements in border coordination procedures".
A Pakistani security official, speaking to AFP confirmed that the American generals had arrived in Pakistan, but declined to give any further information until after the meeting had taken place later in the afternoon.
On Thursday, US President Barack Obama met Pakistan's Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani at a nuclear summit in Seoul, and vowed to rescue their troubled alliance which almost ruptured over months of mistrust and recriminations.
It was the highest-level exchange between the two sides since the killing of Osama bin Laden in a clandestine US raid on Pakistan last May, which humiliated Pakistan and raised fresh questions about its allegiance in the war on terror.

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