The Pakistani Taliban threatened on Tuesday to attack NATO supply trucks if they tried to resume supplies to troops in Afghanistan. Tahir Ali reports.
Earlier, US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said that the US was sorry for the loss of Pakistani military lives. "We are sorry for the losses suffered by the Pakistani military. We are committed to working closely with Pakistan and Afghanistan to prevent this from ever happening again," she said.
Straight after Clinton's statement, Pakistan's Defence Committee of the Cabinet under the chairmanship of Prime Minister Raja Pervez Ashraf held a meeting and decided to reopen the ground lines of communication through Pakistani territory, to and from Afghanistan to facilitate the transition and the subsequent transformation process there.
As the decision was made public, a strong reaction came from the TTP who warned to target every NATO container passing through Pakistani routes.
Talking to rediff.com from an undisclosed location, TTP central spokesperson Ihsanullah Ihsan said, "The resumption of NATO supply line shows the slavish nature of the Pakistani government; the resumption is disrespect to the blood of those soldiers who sacrificed their lives in Salala check post while guarding the borders."
Ihsan said, "We already knew that the NATO supply line would be resumed sooner or later; that's why we have also completed our strategies and will attack every container of the NATO going to Afghanistan via Pakistan."
Ihsan added, "The resumption seems the thinking of Pakistani leaderships who are enslaved to the US and its allies."
