NATO Reaches Transit Deal With Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan

NATO reached an agreement with Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan to ship military equipment out of Afghanistan through Central Asia, NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen reported today:

We also reached agreement on reverse transit from Afghanistan with three Central Asian partners: Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan. These agreements will give us a range of new options and the robust and flexible transport network we need....

With Russia we have a transit arrangement, a reverse transit arrangement already, and the fact that we have now concluded a transit arrangement, three concrete transit arrangements with Central Asian countries at the Chicago Summit, will make the use of the Russian transit arrangement even more effective.

In response to a question on payment for the reverse transit, he implied that there was some, but wouldn't specify: "I do not comment on details in the transit arrangements, but it goes without saying that we have concluded agreements that are of mutual satisfaction of the involved partners."

Meanwhile, he said negotiations with Pakistan on reopening those lines of communication continue: "I'm not going to comment on details in negotiations with Pakistan. I'll just reiterate that I still hope that a solution can be found in the very near future."

These NATO deals are not related to separate deals the U.S. has reached. Obviously the U.S. is a member of NATO, and it's not clear if this new NATO deal now covers all NATO member countries besides the U.S., or what.

The most interesting subplot here is what this means for Pakistan. The AP story on Rasmussen's comments had an intriguing bit of analysis:

The announcement on Monday appears to indicate that Washington and the allies are now preparing for the possibility that the supply link through Pakistan, said to be about six times cheaper than its northern alternative, may not be reopened at all.

The report doesn't give any evidence for that speculation, but perhaps the reporter is having off the record conversations with NATO officials to that effect. That theory could be supported by the next sentence: "It is also likely to put pressure on Pakistan to ease its negotiating stance, which has been stuck in part on how much money the U.S. and NATO should pay to transport the trucks through Pakistani territory."

Anyway, as Rasmussen suggested, and as U.S. officials have emphasized, they really want Pakistan to come around. They thought that was going to happen before the summit last month, but it didn't. (Which raises another, admittedly minor, question: what impact did the Central Asian presidents' absence from the summit have on this deal? Were they ready to roll it out at the summit but then didn't because it would have called attention to the fact that the Central Asians weren't there?)

Whatever the case, this will certainly put a bit more pressure on Pakistan to come around on a deal.