Tuesday, July 5, 2011

US shifts supply routes to Central Asia: report

US shifts supply routes to Central Asia: report: "The US military is expanding its Central Asian supply routes to the war in Afghanistan, fearing that the routes going through Pakistan could be endangered by deteriorating US-Pakistani relations, The Washington Post reported late Saturday.

Citing unnamed Pentagon officials, the newspaper said that in 2009, the United States moved 90 percent of its military surface cargo through the Pakistani port of Karachi and then through mountain passes into Afghanistan.

Now almost 40 percent of surface cargo arrives in Afghanistan from the north, along a patchwork of Central Asian rail and road routes that the Pentagon calls the Northern Distribution Network, the report said.

The military is pushing to raise the northern network's share to as much as 75 percent by the end of this year, the paper said.

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