‘US-Pakistan putting past tensions behind them’

JAPAN: US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said Sunday that the United States and Pakistan are putting past tensions behind them to focus on the future, after meeting with her Pakistani counterpart.

It was their first face-to-face meeting since the two countries last week struck a deal to re-open key supply routes into Afghanistan, closed for seven months following a US attack in which 24 Pakistani soldiers died. Clinton told reporters in Tokyo on the sidelines of a conference on Afghanistan that she had “a broad-ranging discussion” with Hina Rabbani Khar on resolving some of the issues surrounding the re-opening of border routes.

“We are both encouraged that we have been able to put the recent difficulties behind us so we can focus on the many challenges ahead,” she said. The killing of the soldiers, coupled with a US raid on the Pakistani compound of Al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden in May 2011, had plunged ties between the two nations to new lows.

But the two countries aimed to use the “positive momentum generated” by last week’s deal to move forward on many of the challenges still facing them, Clinton said.

AFP