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The NATO summit in Chicago started on Sunday, and while the focus of the summit is supposed to be on withdrawing troops from Afganistan, a rift between the U.S. and Pakistan is taking center stage.
The tiff is over a supply route through Pakistan that the U.S. wants open on time for when they want to send military personnel and equipment home. The supply line was closed in November after a NATO airstrike killed 24 Pakistani soldiers.
According to the New York Times, officials on both sides "expressed optimism last week that an agreement was imminent," but they weren't able to close a deal before the summit. Pakistan was invited with the hope that it would work up enough good will to get a deal done, otherwise it would be "really uncomfortable" for Pakistan at the conference, a senior U.S. official told the Times. That was not the case, unfortunately.
Apparently they haven't been able to reach a deal because Pakistan is trying to raise the price for using their supply route. Before the closure the cost per truck using the supply line was $250, but according to a Times source they're now asking for “upward of $5,000." An American official with knowledge of the negotiations told the AFP, "That's, in a word, unacceptable."