US will not be price ‘gouged’ by Pakistan, says Panetta

WASHINGTON: US Defense Secretary Leon Panetta vowed yesterday not to let the United States be “gouged” by Pakistan on the price it charges for overland deliveries of American military supplies to Afghanistan.
Pakistan closed the land route to US supplies in November as punishment for a botched US air strike that mistakenly killed 24 Pakistani soldiers, but have been in negotiations to reopen the border crossing.
US defense officials have said the Pakistanis are demanding several thousand dollars for every truck crossing its border with the supplies, up from $250 per truck before the closure.
“We’re not about to get gouged in the price. We want a fair price,” Panetta said on ABC’s “This Week.” Without the Pakistani supply lines, the United States has had to rely on a much longer, more expensive northern route to resupply its forces in Afghanistan.
The supply lines impasse is just one of a host of issues that have opened deep schisms in relations between the two countries, supposed allies in the US battle against extremists.
Relations plunged to an all-time low after a US raid by US special operations forces killed Al-Qaeda leader Osama Bin Laden in a compound in a Pakistani garrison town on May 2, 2011.
The United States has moved gingerly to make up with the Pakistanis, who were incensed that they learned of the raid only after it had been carried out. But the issue flared anew last week when a Pakistani court sentenced a doctor who helped the United States gather DNA data used to track down Bin Laden to 33 years in prison for helping the Americans.
“It is so difficult to understand and it’s so disturbing that they would sentence this doctor to 33 years for helping in the search for the most notorious terrorist in our times,” Panetta said.
“What they have done here,” he added, “does not help in the effort to try to reestablish a relationship between the United States and Pakistan.” The Senate Appropriations Committee has voted to cut US aid to Pakistan by a symbolic $33 million — $1 million for each year of jail time given to Shakeel Afridi, the doctor. The measure, an amendment to the $52 billion US foreign aid budget, passed in a 30-0 vote in a sign of growing frustration with Pakistan.
Three killed
A remote-controlled bomb targeting a police van killed three passers-by and wounded six other people in Pakistan’s troubled southwest yesterday, police said.
The explosive device was planted underneath a donkey cart on the outskirts of Quetta, the capital of the oil-and-gas-rich Baluchistan province, which borders Iran and Afghanistan.
“The bomb targeting a police van exploded seconds after it passed by the cart, killing three passers-by and wounding six others including a policeman,” local police official Sikandar Tareen said.
Another local police official, Saleem Shawani, confirmed the incident and casualties. There was no claim of responsibility, but Baluchistan suffers from militancy, sectarian violence between Sunni and Shiite Muslims and a separatist insurgency. Gunmen riding a motorcycle shot dead the chief warden of the district prison on May 19.
19 pilgrims hurt
Elsewhere, a roadside bomb in Iraq’s Anbar province wounded 19 Pakistani Shiite pilgrims yesterday, police and a doctor said, in the second attack against pilgrims in the Sunni province in days.
“A bus carrying Pakistani pilgrims was targeted by a roadside bomb at around 4:00 p.m. (1300 GMT) on the highway to Baghdad” from Fallujah, Anbar police spokesman Lt. Col. Hassan Taher Kitab said.
The attack wounded the driver of the bus and 18 passengers, including three children who were in critical condition, he said.
Assem Al-Hadithi, a doctor at Fallujah Hospital, confirmed the toll, and said that the pilgrims were going to visit the Al-Askari Shiite shrine in Samarra, north of Baghdad.
The attack comes after a roadside bomb exploded on Wednesday near a bus carrying Lebanese Shiite pilgrims west of Anbar’s provincial capital Ramadi, killing three and wounding at least 10.
Iraq is home to some of the holiest sites in Shiite Islam, to which hundreds of thousands of pilgrims flock each year. Pilgrims are periodically attacked, often with bombs.
FROM: AGENCIES