BRUSSELS: The head of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) Anders Fogh Rasmussen said on Monday that he hoped that Pakistan will keep open NATO supply route to Afghanistan because it is in Pakistan’s own interest to contribute positively to stability and security in the region.
Interior Minister Chaudhry Nisar Ali said on Saturday that Pakistan will review its relations with the United States, a day after a US drone strike killed Pakistani Taliban chief Hakimullah Mehsud in the restive North Waziristan tribal agency which Nisar described as an attack on peace process.
Major political leadership in the country especially Imran Khan, whose party Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) rules the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, one of the two routes the NATO supplies move in and out of Afghanistan, threatened to cut NATO supplies after November 20 if the US didn’t stop launching drone strikes on Pakistan’s territory.
In a news conference on Monday, Rasmussen said he believed the Pakistani authorities including the government and the military realised that it was in Pakistan’s interest to ensure peace and stability in Afghanistan.
The NATO chief said that the security of Afghanistan and Pakistan is inter-linked, adding that there can’t be security in the one country without security in the other.
