US optimistic on Pakistan-NATO route talks

ISLAMABAD: The United States hopes Pakistan will soon agree to re-open supply routes to NATO troops in Afghanistan, a US official said yesterday, after a Senate panel threatened to cut aid to Islamabad over the standoff.
Pakistan closed the supply routes in protest against last November's killing of 24 Pakistani soldiers in a NATO air attack along the Afghan border.
"Talks are ongoing and we hope to reach a resolution soon," the US official told Reuters.
NATO has been seeking to compensate for the lack of access in Pakistan with shipments of war supplies via Afghanistan's other neighbours, but those routes are more expensive.
A Western official said fees for use of the routes which Pakistan is demanding are under discussion in talks currently focused on technical issues. US President Barack Obama said on Monday that he felt the United States and Pakistan were making "diligent progress" on a deal.
Meanwhile, US missiles killed four militants in a Taleban stronghold of Pakistan yesterday, officials said, amid increasing strains with the West over a six-month blockade on NATO supplies into Afghanistan.
A drone targeted a compound near Miranshah, the main town of the tribal district where Pakistan has resisted US pressure to launch a sweeping offensive against militants fighting US troops in neighbouring Afghanistan.
"The drone fired two missiles on a house in the Tabai area near Miranshah," one of the security officials told AFP on condition of anonymity adding that four militants were killed.
"It is not immediately known if an important target is among those killed," he said.
The area is a stronghold of the Haqqani network and Pakistani Taleban chief Hakimullah Mehsud.
Islamabad denies any support for Haqqani activities, but the former chief US military officer, Admiral Mike Mullen, called them a "veritable arm" of the Pakistan Inter-Services Intelligence agency.
US officials say its leaders are based in Waziristan, the most notorious militant stronghold in Pakistan's semi-autonomous northwestern tribal belt.